29-04-03 Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, Director of the African Department of the IMF tells PM Musonge of Cameroon that fiscal policy will be discussed among others. One of the actions to shape the fate of African oil will take place in Douala. The importance of the act to manifest itself through a workshop constituted part of the discussions between the Premier, Peter Mafany Musonge and Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, Director of the African Department of the IMF.
Code-named: “Workshop on Macroeconomic Policies and Governance in Sub-Saharan Oil Exporting Countries,” the Douala workshop is an important step to fine-tune the management of African oil. For quite sometime now, oil-producing countries have been faced with some of the same challenges as in other natural-resource-based countries. But the peculiarity stems from the nature of the oil market and oil production.

The main challenges come from the high volatility of oil prices, its poor relations with the rest of the economy, the fact that it is an exhaustible resource and the tendency of oil-producing countries to forget that other resources could also serve as development factors in the absence of oil. That notwithstanding, one of the disturbing issues, is the high concentration of revenue flows from the oil sector under the control of few institutions and individuals.
As all these are being regretted upon, a wealth of experiences in policy making in oil producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa has accumulated. As that were not enough, considerable academic research has been devoted to policy challenges facing oil-producing countries.

It is clear that most oil-producing countries face the same challenges, but responses in many areas of policy making have to be country specific.
It is this specific nature of the solution to the problem that makes the Douala Confab itself peculiar. The workshop is an experience-sharing exercise where participants will select the good points from the bad ones. The issue, is whether oil will be a blessing or a curse in the years to come.