Being listed did not guarantee being built: that recurring flaw in previous Cameroonian budget cycles is what the government says it wants to fix for the 2027-2029 Priority Investment Programme (PIP).
Filtering now happens in several stages. To be eligible, a project must carry a minimum cost of 10 billion FCFA, fit within the national development strategy, sit in a designated priority zone, and have already undergone an opportunity study and a pre-feasibility study.
There is a further substantive requirement: the project must contribute to fixed capital formation or import substitution, and show a national scope or a structural economic and social impact — not merely local interest.
Each file then receives a score across economic, social, environmental and climate criteria, before being ranked into one of four priority tiers: structural economic transformation, infrastructure rehabilitation, import substitution or export development, and second-generation projects.
The context shows the scale of the budgetary stakes: the public portfolio holds roughly 500 projects, requiring an estimated 8.5 trillion FCFA in cumulative programming — of which 7.56 trillion FCFA is needed just to complete the 284 projects already under way. Final selection is still arbitrated by the cabinet council, based on the economic and budgetary programming document.
The tighter criteria say nothing yet about how many projects will actually make the cut for 2027-2029, nor how the state will arbitrate between 500 competing files for a budget envelope that is not expanding at the same pace.
