Jean-Louis Billon: Economy, Growth and Investments in Côte d’Ivoire

Interview with Jean-Louis Billon, Minister of Commerce, Craft and SME Promotion of Côte d’Ivoire

What has been the outcome from the start of the new government until now? What has the government done, particularly in your sector – trade, handicrafts and the promotion of SMEs – with regard to the general public and companies?

When I started work in this office, coming from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we had to reactivate the different trade laws that weren’t in action for years, competition laws for trade and anti-trust laws and commission. What we did first was to put them back in office. Secondly, we passed a small business act in the parliament exactly like the one in the US and now we are going to implement a small and medium businesses agency. Also, we have a new handicrafts code that was passed in the parliament. The main challenge we face today is to have a more competitive trade sector. The Ivorian population is complaining about high prices on the markets, the cost of life is too high. That is the challenge we are facing today. So, any steps we take will be aimed at increasing competition, promoting trade and decreasing the general prices of goods.

Of course, and that’s also why you have decided to raise the minimum wages.

Yes, because the purchasing power helps face that high cost of life. Generally speaking for the whole country and not only for my department, the two main challenges are employment, which means we have to improve and promote investments, as well as lower the cost of life. So, if you have a good job and a good salary, you will be in a much better position to deal with the problem of the high cost of life.

What steps have you taken to increase and attract new investments into the country?

There have been several steps taken. First, we have a new investment code, a more attractive one. There is of course tax rebate and many other incentives to attract foreign investments into the country and promote local investments too. Second, we passed a new small and medium size businesses law. We also have a new program to improve the situation of the SMEs in the country, the Phoenix Plan. We want to double, if not triple, the number of SMEs we have in the country and increase their share in the national production. This is a program that will take several years or at least the next seven years.

Some people are still complaining that taxes are raising and it is always the same companies that are being charged. People who pay taxes and expenses for trade and development, etc., are seeing the costs rising. They are complaining saying “the government needs money, because they have projects, but it’s always the same people that are paying”. What would you comment on that?

Thank you for raising the issue. It’s true that we have complaints coming from the private sector. What we are working on today is to improve our ranking in the Doing Business booklet that the World Bank issues every year. We were one of the best reformers last year and we hope to jump up to a better ranking this year. In the reforms that we are passing, we are decreasing the amount of taxes. We are also working on general IRS reforms in order to increase the revenues, but also decrease tax pressure on individual companies. This is also one of the challenges that we are facing.

Among the policies that you are implementing, you are trying to export more towards the US. Also, the country is back in the AGOA. Can you shed more light on the process and what you are expecting out of that?

The AGOA is the African Growth Opportunity Act implemented by the US government in favor of African countries, which provides the possibility to export to the US tax free. Côte d’Ivoire has resumed its rights in the AGOA. We are now back in AGOA. We were barred because of the Ivorian crisis for years. Today, we are benefiting again from the AGOA, exporting mainly raw products such as cocoa, coffee and fisheries and now we are working on manufactured products to get more value added to our economy. Let’s note that Côte d’Ivoire is the first exporter of cocoa worldwide.

How are you going to add value to the economy, to bring in some investors and industries and to transform all the raw material that you already have?

The investment code is favoring local transformation. We also want to work with the SMEs and make them competitive enough to face the international market. We want to improve the SMEs and improve their exporting capacity. We can’t continue importing all the time. We finish a product and export raw material – this is not viable in the long run.

Allegedly, the amazing growth of around 9% that Côte d’Ivoire has been experiencing since the last three years is in fact an infrastructural growth – but the growth of the economy itself is still very limited — only 2% as opposed to the official 9%. This can be worrying because infrastructural enhancement to increase growth is not the reality of an economy.

In fact, we can’t say that this is completely true. Of course because of the Ivorian crisis, the entire development process of this country was completely stopped. By resuming this process, you are actually catching up with modernization and it gives you your share of growth. Also the private sector is now investing more and more and for years, many companies were refraining from investing in increasing their production capacity and they are doing it today. On the other side, we cannot ignore the lack of infrastructure in the country. Electricity, roads — if you don’t have those infrastructures, you can’t have competitive companies. So first, we had to resume and modernize infrastructure in order to attract more private companies — we are in this process today.

What are the products that you would like to push more for exports?

We export a lot into the sub-Saharan region. Côte d’Ivoire acts as a major supplier for the surrounding countries. What we need to increase are the exports to Europe, the US or Asia — we are weak in those regions of the world. At the same time, we are improving in mining and agriculture and we would like to improve our exports of handicrafts and some agricultural products as well, such as cashew, rubber, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, etc.

What is your long-term vision for Côte d’Ivoire? How do you see the country developing? What is your dream? What is that ‘something’ that can really be achieved?

I am very confident about the future of Côte d’Ivoire for the simple reason that in the 80s we talked about Côte d’Ivoire in terms of the Ivorian miracle. At that time, Côte d’Ivoire was an emerging country. But the word “emerging” was not yet applied to countries like ours. We were far ahead of many African and South Asian countries. We went through a long economic and political crisis. We are now back in business as usual however we have a lot to catch up, because during the crisis we went backwards. By resuming the development process and with the aim of responding to people’s needs and expectations, we cannot do less than improve and develop this country for the next 30 or 50 years. So, as a general rule, we should experience a sustainable growth for several decades. There will be economic gain in Africa in the future and Côte d’Ivoire will be one of the major players in the process.

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