Senegal and the IMF. Contradictory numbers and a difficult road out of the crisis

Is the discrepancy in numbers between Senegal and the IMF delaying the expected agreements? (Reuters)

Senegal and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came out with messages of varying tone and substance on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington this week, even though the two sides have been sitting at the same table for more than a year and a half in search of a way out of the country’s deepest financial crisis.

Senegalese Finance Minister Cheikh Diba and Economy Minister Abdourahmane Sarr held three meetings in New York on Monday with IMF officials, including Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, Radio France Internationale reported.

As soon as the meetings were over, the Minister of Economy announced that “Senegal is on the path of fiscal unification.” Georgieva’s response was brief and different, as she did not mention the possibility of a new agreement, and only wrote a post on the “X” platform in which she stressed the need for reforms to “reduce debt weaknesses,” reflecting, according to sources quoted by French radio, that the Bretton Woods Foundation believes that Dakar’s estimates are “overly optimistic.”

The number gap

The gap between the two parties goes beyond the boundaries of discourse to the heart of the numbers. In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the IMF lowered its forecast for Senegalese economic growth in 2026 to 2.2% from 3.0%, while Dakar is sticking to the estimate of 2.5%, and raised its current account deficit forecast to 6.2% of GDP from 5.4% previously. In addition, the inflation forecast was raised to 2.6% instead of 2.0%.

These figures remain below the regional average for sub-Saharan Africa (4.3%). At the budget deficit level, the government aims to reduce it to 5.4% of GDP in 2026 from 7.8% in 2025, according to a statement issued by the IMF mission last November, which described the 2026 budget as “very ambitious” and called for “more conservative outlooks.”

The roots of the crisis go back to October 2024, when the IMF froze a $1.8 billion financing program after revealing “hidden debt” accumulated under former President Macky Sall.

According to the IMF’s statement on March 26, 2025, an audit by the Senegalese Court of Accounts revealed that the actual debt at the end of 2023 amounted to 99.7% of GDP compared to the officially declared 74.4%, and that hidden borrowings represented 25.3 percentage points of GDP. The IMF later estimated the total debt of the public and semi-public sector at 132% of GDP by the end of 2024, while the value of hidden debt is estimated at about $13 billion, according to Reuters.

The IMF proposed to Dakar a debt restructuring, but Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko rejected the proposal at his party’s meeting on November 8.

Instead of restructuring, the government has bet on an “economic and social recovery plan” to mobilize 762.6 billion francs from West Africa through new taxes that include games of chance ($300 billion), telephone payment services ($76.5 billion), and imports of phones and vehicles, according to Afrique 21.

Trust Equation

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) African Managing Director Abebe Selassie said the recent talks between the two sides in Washington had been “positive” but needed “further reflection,” stressing the fund’s keenness to “avoid imposing too much austerity on the Senegalese people.”

According to Financial Afrik’s analysis, Senegal will have to repay about $1.1 billion of Eurobonds over the next three years, while its bonds are trading between 50 and 70 cents per euro – a typical level of non-performing debt – and its interest rates have risen from 4% to more than 12%.

Between Dakar’s optimism that sees the light at the end of the tunnel and the realism of the IMF that sees the tunnel longer, the discrepancy in numbers seems to be just a façade for a deeper disparity in the reading of economics, politics, and sovereignty.