Excellency the Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts;

Mr. representative of the Governor of the Littoral region;

Mr. Representative of the Prefect of Wouri;

Madam Technical Advisor No. 1 of MINPMEESA;

Directors or representatives of the central services of the Ministry;

Directors or representatives of public and semi-public companies;

Directors or representatives of employers' organisations;

Ladies and Gentlemen Directors of SMEs;

In your respective ranks and grades;

Dear attendees;

The Cameroon Subcontracting and Partnership Exchange is honored by your presence in this room.

We are all the more glorified by the presence in person of his Excellency the Minister, who, despite his immensely busy schedule, made the trip to the city of Douala for today's event,

The BSTP, its staff and the SMEs/SMIs say thank you for supporting them. Thank you for being sensitive to the problems of SMEs and to all the initiatives aimed at contributing to their development.

Today's consultation workshop, which will have the Ministry of Public Procurement as the main speaker, aims to present to participants certain regulatory provisions that facilitate access for SMEs to subcontracting contracts under public procurement.

It should be noted that despite these provisions, the effective access of SMEs to public procurement remains a challenge. This leads to a double questioning: How to allow a more massive and efficient participation of Cameroonian SMEs in public markets or how to make public markets more attractive for SMEs?

 The second question to which this workshop will attempt to provide an answer is: How can we motivate public buyers to no longer only favor large companies and multinationals, but to get into the habit of selecting SMEs without this becoming seen as risky? Or how to define fair selection and evaluation criteria to promote SME access to major subcontracting opportunities in the public procurement system?

Ladies and gentlemen,

It will therefore be a question for all of us gathered here to "identify, through dialogue, the constraints faced by Cameroonian SMEs in accessing the markets of the public procurement system in order to propose appropriate measures for greater competitiveness of SMEs. and improving their access to markets in compliance with the regulations in force”.

At the end of the exchanges, which we hope will be enriching, we would like the participants to come up with strong recommendations for the stakeholders. Recommendations that will help to better supervise SMEs and increase their access to public procurement.

I thank you for your kind attention.