By Radarr Africa Business Desk
LAGOS, October 29 (Radarr Africa) – The finance committee of Senegal’s National Assembly will review a revised budget that is central to securing a new programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after Finance Minister Cheikh Diba asked lawmakers to look again at a draft the ruling Pastef party had rejected, Africanews reported, citing AFP.
Diba made the request on Tuesday, according to the report. He said he wanted a constructive outcome and to avoid a shutdown that would harm the country, and urged officials to show responsibility and perspective in their institutional relations.
Ousmane Sonko, the Pastef leader and speaker of the National Assembly, agreed to the request. He said he would work to set dates for the committee proceedings and the next plenary session, and promised the Assembly would vote “with complete calm and complete clarity”, Africanews reported.
Any delay could jeopardise Senegal’s bid for an IMF bailout. Dakar hopes to agree a 36-month programme worth $2.2 billion to stabilise public finances, the report said. In September, the IMF reached a staff-level agreement with Senegal on the programme, according to AFP reporting carried by Citizen Digital. Executive board approval had not yet been announced, and the bailout remains subject to conditions.
The dispute began when Pastef members rejected the 2026 revised budget bill in the legislature’s finance committee last week, AFP reported. Pastef holds 130 of the Assembly’s 165 seats. The party also said it would not accept a separate draft budget for 2027.
Pastef said it does not oppose revising the budget, but disagrees over spending trade-offs, financing methods and what it called insufficient guarantees to Parliament. It said it remained open to talks with the government, according to AFP.
Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Mohamed Lo called for dialogue at a press conference in Dakar and urged the opposition not to paralyse the country by blocking the budget. “You cannot bring a country to a standstill,” Africanews quoted him as saying. AFP reported that he challenged Sonko to state his budget demands before the session, said he would work around him if needed, and warned that the government would use all the constitutional tools available to it if the deadlock persisted. He also said the two sides were not adversaries and that he was extending his hand.
The budget dispute sits within a wider political split. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye fired Sonko, a former prime minister, in May, AFP reported. The two men had been allies, and their split was partly over how to handle the country’s debt. Sonko was elected president of the National Assembly on 26 May 2026, according to the Africanews photo caption.
Senegal’s public debt was estimated by the IMF at 132% of gross domestic product at the end of 2024. Africanews said the debt burden stems from the discovery of billions of dollars in misreported borrowing by the previous administration.
The budget row comes amid heightened social tension, including high youth unemployment and a cost-of-living crisis. A three-day general strike took place the previous week, Africanews reported.
The revised bill had been scheduled for debate in the National Assembly on Tuesday, according to the earlier AFP report. Africanews did not say whether that sitting went ahead, and gave no dates for the finance committee’s review or the next plenary session.
The IMF’s staff-level agreement with Senegal, struck in September, still requires approval from the Fund’s executive board before the programme can take effect, Citizen Digital said in its AFP-based report.
