About three hundreds small and medium size Gabonese businesses (SMBs) met on July 22 as part of a coalition at the Chamber of Commerce of Libreville in order “to question the Government about their arrears of payment to the Treasury” estimated at 37 billion FCFA. Yves Evouna, spokesman of the coalition, said during the meeting that several years after responding to a call for tenders and agreeing to execute the tender, these SMBs have never received a single kopeck from the Department of Budget, in charge of public order regulations.
The coalition is threatening to organize, in the coming weeks, a sit-in between the Prime Minister’s Office and the Department of Budget’s for their complaint to be heard.
The SMB’s protest started last june while Christian Magnagna, Minister of Budget and Public Accounts, stated that the government would continue to work on the implementation of the previous deadlines settlement plan this year 2015.
He even said that an audit of other domestic liabilities was under implementation. The “General Directorate of Debt”, indicates that the public debt service amounted to 1.1268 trillion CFA francs in 2013 compared to 338.6 billion CFA francs in 2012, which represent an increase of 232.8%.