The Regulatory Landscape of Microfinance in the CEMAC Region

This paper examines microfinance regulation in the CEMAC zone, an economic and monetary union between Camaroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Chad and the Central African Republic. The paper states that microfinance regulations have developed rapidly but in a policy vacuum, which is exacerbating institutional dysfunctions at the macro, meso and MFI levels. It identifies a number of features of microfinance regulation in the CEMAC region that can distort the market and competition between microfinance participants. There is no regional poverty alleviation policy in the CEMAC region to support a regional regulatory framework. The paper demonstrates that an integrated microfinance model policy framework could be used to enable convergence of goals and address inefficiencies that could possibly exacerbate poverty such as:

• Administrative bottlenecks;
• Institutional duplications;
• Potential collision of goals between classical banks and MFIs, and also between region institutions, national institutions and MFIs.