Published 26 March 2024   Download the report French Read the executive summary in English

About

This report identifies tax measures that will allow Cameroon to mobilise additional revenues to finance its health care system. Currently, Cameroon allocates less than 4% of its GDP to finance its health care system. The limited public funding, coupled with inefficient health care spending, contributes to poor health outcomes in the country. Meanwhile, household’s out-of-pocket expenditure for health care remain large. Key contributing factors to the slow progress include the low tax-to-GDP ratio, a high degree of informality and low tax buoyancy.

Cameroon faces opportunities to increase its tax revenues and put the financing of its health care system on a more solid footing. The report identifies four areas of reform: (i) broadening the tax base by incentivising formalisation and compliance, (ii) increasing revenues from health-related taxes and improving their design; (iii) increasing general tax revenues through tax reforms that promote growth and formalisation; (iv) softly earmarking a portion of tax revenues for health.

Furthermore, the report includes short and medium-term revenue estimates of the tax reforms that have been identified and makes proposals on ways to finance the future universal health care system in the country.

 

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