Two years at CSPH:

Revisiting Elung Paul’s record-breaking performance

Elung Paul is leaving the CSPH a better place than he met it

At the time of his appointment as GM of CSPH, the state-owned company was grappling with a net deficit of 12 billion FCFA. But barely one year after he came to office, Elung Paul made good the lag, recording a 4 billion FCFA net profit in 2013. He tripled the margin in 2014, recording a net profit of 12 billion CFA. The company’s profit margin is expected to rise further this year

By Douglas A. Achingale in Yaounde

Wherever a road passes, development follows. So goes a common saying. The Median begs to modify the saying a little, to read: wherever Elung Paul Che saunters, development follows. The technocrat is today Minister Delegate at the Ministry of Finance. Confirmed. But a retrospective look at the structure whose destiny he was called upon to preside over for two and a half years, reveals the awful strides he made to advance it.

                Dependable sources have told The Median that as of 26 April 2013 when Elung Paul was appointed General Manager of the Hydrocarbons Prices Stabilization Fund (CSPH), the state-owned company had a net deficit of about 12 billion FCFA. However, barely one year after the prescient and punctilious manager took over, a 12 billion FCFA net profit was recorded.

                The same sources attributed this landmark achievement to the former GM’s stringent management style. Being a rare aficionado of financial sanity, he cut down recurrent expenditures, reduced delays in the treatment of files that came about as a result of laxity and red tape, and increased benefits and bonuses for meritorious workers.

                “The work atmosphere at CSPH changed tremendously during Elung Paul’s reign,” an insider told this reporter. “Since there was genuine motivation for those who worked hard, most workers redoubled their efforts in order to be motivated. Those who could not do so stayed cocooned in the cone of abysmal darkness because the light that the new GM brought into the company was too bright for their liking.”

                Our informant was very sure that the amount to be made as profit for 2015 would certainly rise given the competent and transparent manner in which Elung Paul is piloting (he is still the GM) the affairs of CSPH.   

                However, while Mr. Elung was grittily determined to move the company and Cameroon’s economy forward, some forces of darkness tried in vain to pull him down. These were mostly journalists of the old school – Neanderthal and bovine owners of some French language newspapers – who made scurrilous remarks and disparaging comments meant to besmirch the GM’s lambent image.

                It could be easily understood, The Median further learned, that the journalists in question were simply licking their wounds. Before Elung came to office, they had been enjoying some free money from CSPH, to the tune of tens of millions of FCFA per annum, ostensibly to cover the activities of the company. Those were some of the wasteful expenditures that Elung put an end to, causing the said journalists to run amok.   

                However, since light and darkness have nothing in common, Elung went ahead fastidiously with his good works at CSPH, and this did not fail to catch the attention of the Head of State. With a great financial reformist (AlamineOusmaneMey) already on the driver’s seat at the Ministry of Finance, it dawned on President Paul Biya that Elung Paul was the right man to work in tandem with the former to keep Cameroon’s hope of emergence by 2035 alive.

                It was therefore not surprising to those whose eyes could penetrate surfaces that this “golden boy” was made the first ever Anglophone to be Minister (not secretary of state) in the finance ministry.