Senegal’s slower economic growth, its widening fiscal deficit and a potential delay in International Monetary Fund financing could cloud the outlook ahead of Nov. 17 parliamentary elections, analysts say.
President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, just five months into the job, set the stage for the snap vote when he dissolved the opposition-led National Assembly last week.
Election planning will now clog up the calendar just as the West African nation is preparing for the next review of the $1.9 billion IMF loan that it secured last year in a bid to stabilise public finances.
“Senegal is unlikely to have its next review approved by the IMF board before December,” Barclays analyst Michael Kafe said in a note to clients.
Any delay in the disbursement of the next tranche of financing would coincide with other less than encouraging economic developments.
This year’s growth forecast has been reduced to 6.0%, the IMF said on Friday, from a forecast of 7.1% in June, after the economy expanded at a slower-than-projected pace in the first half.
This slowdown reflects weaker activity in the mining, construction and agro-industrial sectors,” the fund said.
Analysts are keeping a close eye on the political and financial temperature in the run up to the vote.
Economic disparities were behind at least some of the grievances that brought people out onto the streets in violent protests in 2021 – though there has been no suggestion of repeated unrest this time around.
Reuters
