Visit of IMF Director General:

Biya displays excessive warmth towards Lagarde, understandably
President Biya is customarily cold towards his guests. But it struck the public that the president displayed extraordinary affection towards Christine Lagarde, the IMF Director General who visited Cameroon last week
By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde
President Paul Biya was at the height of his spirits when he received the visiting IMF Director General, Christine Lagarde at the Unity Palace on Thursday last week. For a man who is usually known to shake hands at an arm’s length with his guests, Paul Biya literally bent over backwards to welcome Christine Lagarde. Then the fact that Paul Biya sent his Director of Cabinet in preference to his director of protocol, to welcome Christine Lagarde, as she alighted from her car at the terrace of the Unity Palace was telling. It betrayed the esteem and reverence he has for the French woman.
And this might just explain why Martin Belinga Eboutou was almost like break-dancing, as he ushered Mrs. Lagarde into the luscious confines of the Unity Palace.
Then Biya embellished his audience with Lagarde by offering her a traditionally decorated gourd. He later in the evening also offered a special dinner to Lagarde and the high-powered delegation she led to Cameroon.
Television cameras revealed president Biya in the heights of his spirits, as he welcomed Lagarde. The same high spirits were displayed during the state dinner later in the evening.
For her part, Christine Lagarde was no less enthusiastic and warm, perhaps because it was easily her first visit to Cameroon in the capacity as IMF boss. And she did not conceal her feelings when she spoke to prying pressmen when she arrived at the Nsimalen International Airport early on Thursday.

“I am happy to be in Cameroon for the first time in my capacity as GM of the IMF,” she said.
    “It is a visit I was supposed to have made long ago, given the economic situation in Cameroon in particular and the Cemac sub-region in general,” she added.
    She said she was in Cameroon to share ideas with the authorities on how to adjust to the exogenous shocks invited on the economy by the growing insecurity (Boko Haram) and especially the dip in oil prices on the world market.
    She maintained her earlier statements when she came out her her discussion with President Biya.
“Our discussion touched on several issues but dwelled on what strategies to adopt in the face of prolonged drop in oil prices and the growing insecurity in the North,” she said.
    In the course of her three-day sojourn here, Christine Lagarde also met with the PM Philemon Yang, the Finance Ministers of the six Cemac states, private sector operators, business women and the civil society.
    In all of these meetings she underscored the resilience demonstrated by Cameroon’s economy in the face of the dual exogenous shocks of insecurity and fuel price drop. Lagarde praised Cameroonian authorities for this remarkable feat, noting that Cameroon performed far better than all the other countries of the sub-region, in the wake of shocks in 2015. She noted for example that infrastructural projects in countries like Chad and Equatorial Guinea have grounded to a halt due to the exogenous shocks.
    Commentators say these remarks by Lagarde only reveal president Biya as the right man for the prevailing situation in Cameroon - A veritable war-time leader.
    And that may just explain why President Biya could not be indifferent; he had to display much warmth and affection towards Lagarde.
    Christine Lagarde left Cameroon on Saturday at Midnight.