may reflect the rudimentary level of technology used in the agricultural sector, a sector which remains largely labor intensive. The intensity of labor is even more pronounced in the non traded agricultural production sector, where unskilled labor wages alone account for most of the total value added estimated to over 76%. The remainder of value added is accounted for mainly by profits from capital investment estimated to be about 23%, and taxes on output, whose share as a percentage of aggregated value added is negligible.

By contrast, the rural traded production sector has a different structure. The labor wage contribution to gross value added is significantly lower, at 32%. The larger value added share in this sector is mainly accounted for by profits and returns on capital, altogether estimated to over 66 percent, a marked difference, representing about three times the share of non traded agricultural production. However, rural traded production remains very low in comparison to the overall: with a contribution of about 5 percent to total production and 4 percent to the aggregate value added, and its sectoral share is even lower.<sup>30</sup> The relatively large share of labor force employed in rural non traded production contrasts the low contribution of this sector to aggregate production, established at less than 13 percent. The high share of labor costs in value added, and the much lower productivity of the sector may reflect the non competitive nature of the Cameroonian agriculture.

Likewise, public sector production has one of the lowest value added, about 9% of the aggregate value added. It is lower than the private sector’s share, about 33%, and the informal sector’s share, over 36% (see Table 1 above). Most likely, this may reflect the fact that the public sector value added is essentially made up of wage outlays, as it represents the operating surplus plus depreciation of public entities engaged in the production process. Most value added income accruing to the public sector is accounted for by wages of skilled and unskilled labor which together represents over 84% of the total. Strikingly, public sector value added from profits and returns on capital is extremely low, about 1.3% of public production, despite continuing involvement of government in the production process and mainly in the more capital-intensive industries. This low share of value added may also reflect the level of productivity of a number of public enterprises in the aftermath of the protracted economic crisis, some of which suffered from losses and arrears.<sup>31</sup> Reading down the columns for the public sector current accounts (column 14), we get current expenditures such as government consumption, transfers and interest payments. Government savings estimated at over US$144.5 million, less than 2% of GDP, is the balancing item. Spending on public sector production and transactions with the rest of the world, together, account for most of the current expenditure of the public sector (80%). The latter includes interest payments on foreign debt, and its relatively large share in the aggregate current expenditures in the form of public transfers to the rest of the world reflects the high and unsustainable level of external debt. Note that by 1994, the stock of foreign debt was slightly higher than the GDP, representing exactly 100.7% of GDP and 382.2% of exports revenues. At the same time, external debt service accounted for over 5% of GDP.

> 30 The relatively low level of this sector of production and its contribution to the gross value added may also reflect the size of the sector, which is confined to rural areas and involved in the production of a limited number of products.

> 31 In the first round of reforms undertaken by Cameroonian authorities in the early 1990s, the clearance of domestic arrears focused on arrears owed to commercial banks and financial institutions; this program was expanded in the late 1990s to include clearance of arrears owed to public utilities companies and nonfinancial private corporations. For further details see World Bank [1998].

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