To achieve economic and food sovereignty in Senegal, the Head of State, Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, gave a number of directives to his government yesterday, Wednesday June 26, 2024, during the meeting of the Council of Ministers.
In the Council of Ministers which he chaired yesterday, Wednesday June 26, 2024, the President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, asked the Prime Minister to work on the development of a “law on economic sovereignty” in order to better protect companies in strategic sectors and give the Government a greater right to review changes that may occur in the capital. The Head of State indicated to the Prime Minister the need to accelerate the local processing of agricultural products through industrialization, the promotion of local consumption and the modernization of local commerce with boutiques and reference stores. According to him, it is also a question of setting in motion a coherent policy of controlling the prices of consumer products with the recourse, in the short term, to the option of calls for tenders with regard to the country’s supplies. mainly in essential food products and hydrocarbons.
For the Head of State, Senegal’s food sovereignty involves the revival of national industry which remains a priority for government action. For him, the economic sovereignty of Senegal must be based on the development of the national industrial potential and the densification of the industrial fabric into large, small and medium-sized industries. Therefore, he asked the Prime Minister and the ministers in charge of Industry and the Economy to implement a national program for restructuring and rehabilitation of the industrial fabric.
The President of the Republic, in this regard, asked the Prime Minister to supervise the rapid rise of agropoles and Special Economic Zones (SEZs). These driving forces must contribute, in complementarity, to the acceleration of the industrialization of Senegal. He called on the Prime Minister to prepare with the ministers concerned and private sector actors, a consensual strategy of support and tax and land incentives, to improve the competitiveness of local industries and their effective export and creation potential. jobs.
The President of the Republic indicated the urgency of mastering the directory of industrial companies in Senegal with the real jobs announced and the social reports revealed. This exhaustive census and transparency exercise will allow the State to better target its interventions for the promotion of a strong, supervised and supported national private sector. Moreover, the Head of State asked the Prime Minister to prepare, by the end of the year, with all the stakeholders involved, a bill for the transformation of the industrial sector including in particular the guiding principle territorialization of industrial policy and the creation of a concerted, efficient and viable system for financing the acceleration of industrial development in Senegal.
PUBLIC FINANCES Establish a credible budgetary policy
The Head of State, Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, expressed his ambition to establish a credible budgetary policy which strengthens State resources and permanently rationalizes public spending. At the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers which he chaired yesterday, Wednesday June 26, 2024, at the Palais de la République, he asked, in this capacity, the Prime Minister to intensify the execution of a Special Plan for the rationalization of operating expenses in the public and parapublic sectors and to ensure, with the Minister in charge of Finance and Budget, the quality of public spending. He indicated that public resources must imperatively be directed towards financing productive investment and priority social interventions. The President of the Republic also underlined the urgency of implementing an innovative strategy to improve the mobilization of tax and non-tax revenue. He also called for the implementation of a fair and transparent subsidy policy and the rigorous application of a program to rationalize exemptions with, in particular, the updating of the Investment Code and tax legislation as necessary. . In this regard, he recalled the urgent need for complete digitalization and interoperability of the information systems of financial authorities, as well as the intensive generalization of dematerialized payment of taxes, a source of transparency, effectiveness, efficiency and quality of public service. Furthermore, the Head of State invited the Prime Minister to ensure internal and interministerial monitoring of validated budgetary programs and the full operationalization of management control in the ministries, with a view to facilitating, on the one hand, the presentation, on time, of annual performance reports and the settlement bill for year n-1 and, on the other hand, the evaluation of public policies, a constitutional prerogative of the National Assembly since 2016. He also called for the clearance of objective domestic debt and good control of Senegal’s debt.
