Construction d'un MEGC pour l'évaluation de l'impact de la politique économique au Cameroun sur le secteur informel et la pauvreté

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of economic policies on informal sector performances and poverty in Cameroon. It is based on a computable general equilibrium. The model has 5 production sectors including 2 commercial sectors, 2 tradable sectors and 1 non tradable sector, 4 production factors and 3 representative households. It has the advantage of incorporating a detailed modeling of transfers, taxes and consideration of trading margins. The data used in study come from a social accounting matrix developed for Cameroon with 2003 as base year and the third Cameroonians households survey which includes 11,391 households divided into formal households (27.42%), informal agricultural households (36.10%) and informal non-agricultural households (36.48%). Three types of policies have been simulated: the rise of informal household investment through the programs PIAASI and PADER, rising salaries of civilian and military personnel followed by the reduction of import taxes rate, and the combination of the two previous measures. The main results suggest that the increase in informal household’s investment has a positive effect on the performance of the informal sector and led to a decrease in household poverty in this sector. However, it has the opposite effect on the formal sector. As against, rising wages and reduction of import taxes rate is beneficial to the formal sector, but less favorable to the informal sector. The combination of two effects resulted in attenuation of the effect of the each of them.