The president and bicameral legislature are popularly elected, with ministers appointed by the president and precluded from legislative office. Cameroon enjoys relative political stability, unlike most other countries in the turbulent Central African sub-region. The economy is mainly agricultural. The principal commercial crops are cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and bananas. Petroleum products make up more than half of all exports.
Timber is also a major export.
In the early 1980s, Cameroon was one of Africa's economic success stories. However, underlying economic and policy weaknesses were exposed in 1985 when sharp declines in coffee, cocoa and oil prices led to a 60 percent degeneration in the external terms of trade. In addition to this severe terms of trade shock and the over-valued exchange rate up to 1994, Cameroon's economic depression was also caused by a fiscal crisis and, until about four years ago, economic mismanagement. The government was slow to carry out necessary structural reforms which would have enabled it to benefit more from the January 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc. Since late 1996, Cameroon changed course and committed itself to correcting the years of economic mismanagement.