Dakar, Oct 15 (APS) – Former President of the Republic, Macky Sall, rejected the current government’s accusation that he and some of his collaborators had published erroneous data concerning the public accounts of the Senegal.
”I want to say that these comments are false, totally false. Let’s wait for justice to confirm or deny before accusing people…” argued Mr. Sall in an interview given to the American press agency Bloomberg.
”The ministers in question do not even have access to this information […] I hope we will stop this descent into hell and concentrate on the essentials. I left a country where the indicators were green. The International Monetary Fund confirmed this, a month after I left the country,” he defended.
The former head of state also says he regrets that the accusation concerning him at the same time as some of his collaborators pushed the Moody’s agency to downgrade Senegal’s rating. ”Yes, I would like to say that I regret to note the drop in Senegal’s rating by Moody’s, following the intervention of the Prime Minister, in which a scandal relating to the management of the former regime,” he said.
On September 26, members of the government, including Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, accused their predecessors, Macky Sall and former ministers, of having published “erroneous data” concerning the country’s public accounts. , debt and budget deficit in particular.
”The authorities we replaced lied to the country and its partners in […] providing erroneous data,” the head of government argued during a press briefing.
Ousmane Sonko said that the data in question had been published between 2019 and 2023.
According to him, the former President of the Republic, the former Ministers of Finance Amadou Ba (also former Prime Minister), Mamadou Moustapha Ba and Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo are at the origin of their publication.
The Moody’s agency has reduced Senegal’s rating due to the increase in the budget deficit and the level of debt observed in the country between 2019 and 2023, the Senegalese Ministry of Finance and Budget said on Friday, October 4.
”Senegal’s rating has just been revised downwards from Ba3 with stable outlook to B1, with monitoring. This drop is consecutive to the upward revision of the budget deficit and the debt level observed over the period 2019-2023,” the ministry explained in a press release.
The Moody’s agency reacted in this way to ”the audit of public finances, the preliminary results of which were communicated by the government on September 26, 2024,” he added.
This audit was carried out at the request of the Senegalese authorities, in accordance with the requirements of the law […] relating to the transparency code for public finance management,” said the Ministry of Finance and Budget.
ESF/ASG
