By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Senegalese authorities are hoping to finalise a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “very quickly”, its finance minister said on Tuesday, adding that progress had been made on multiple issues related to managing the country’s debt crisis.
The West African nation is trying to tame debts that the IMF said rose to 132% of GDP at the end of 2024 after the current leadership uncovered billions in debts that the previous administration hid.
The IMF froze a $1.8 billion loan package last year, though it said this month that “significant progress” had been made towards a new programme even as work continued on an internal investigation into how the IMF failed to detect the unreported debt.
Speaking to lawmakers on Tuesday, Finance Minister Cheikh Diba also said the discussions were “going very well” with consensus reached on issues including data correction and work continuing on “budgetary and debt issues”.
The IMF is “reviewing the work we are doing with them, the proposals we have, the instruments we have developed,” he said.
A new IMF mission chief is expected to resume duty in January and “we hope… that we will very quickly finalise a programme with the International Monetary Fund, as this is a pressing need,” Diba said.
His tone sharply contrasts Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko’s who last month told a rally that the IMF was pushing for Senegal to restructure its debt, a scenario Sonko said his government was resisting because it would amount to a “disgrace”.
Diba also said Senegal would continue to raise funds using a number of instruments including Eurobonds.
