Trade Facilitation and Performance of Manufacturing Exports from Cameroon

Abstract

Cameroon’s “Vision 2035” considers the increase of manufacturing exports as the key factor of its “emergence” in 2035. In this context, measures to reduce manufacturing production and export costs should be taken with primary attention to reforms in trade facilitation. We use an augmented gravity model to evaluate the impact of five trade facilitation measures - port efficiency, customs efficiency, regulatory environment, use of ICT and quality of roads - on the performance of the manufacturing exports from Cameroon. Our results confirm the positive role of physical infrastructures on African exports. Using the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood to deal with the presence of “zero” in our bilateral trade matrix, we find that port efficiency and quality of roads are the main drivers of trade facilitation in Cameroon.