By Aboubakr Kaira Barry, Managing Director, Results Associates, and Chairman of the Board of the Omou Financial Literacy Center, Bethesda, Maryland, United States
The fundamental problem in Senegal is not the level of its debt; it is the lack of visibility on the state’s resources. You cannot manage what you cannot see. Vitor Gaspar, former director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department, emphasized that most governments do not really know what they own or what they owe. This article argues that the debt-to-GDP ratio is a misleading measure of Senegal’s solvency, proposes public net worth as a better alternative, explains what its adoption would require, and shows how, in the medium term, it could alleviate the country’s budget crisis and reduce the need for the severe austerity currently being considered.
Borrowing is not the enemy — borrowing badly is
An individual’s spending is always another’s income. If a country’s total income in a given year is 1,000,000 CFA francs and 20% of that income is saved rather than spent, then — unless someone (the government, a business, or another household) borrows and spends those 200,000 CFA francs — total spending in the following year drops by 20% and the economy contracts. Borrowing is therefore not optional in a growing economy; it is the mechanism by which savings re-enter circulation as spending.
The question is not whether Senegal should borrow, but what this borrowing finances. Debt used to finance assets that expand productive capacity — a port, a power plant, a road network — can repay itself over time. Debt used to finance recurring expenses does not: it adds to liabilities without adding to the country’s wealth stock.
Senegal’s debt-to-GDP ratio — approximately 119% of GDP, for an economy estimated at around $32-33 billion in 2024 — has sparked a heated political debate on how to resolve the budget crisis. Much of this disagreement stems from the fact that the debt ratio alone cannot tell us what kind of debt Senegal has actually incurred.
Five reasons why the debt-to-GDP ratio is the wrong instrument
Reason 1: It confuses a stock and a flow.
Debt is a stock — the total amount owed at a given time. GDP is a flow — the income generated in a year. The ratio offers a rough stock-flow comparison, but it tells us little, in itself, about the repayment capacity. As noted by Paul Sheard, former vice president of S&P Global, in The Power of Money, this indicator is often treated as if 100% were a natural limit, even though the economic significance of such a “focal number” is ambiguous. What matters is the number of years of income it would take to extinguish the debt — and, more importantly, whether the borrowing has financed something that increases future income.
Reason 2: It does not distinguish productive debt from unproductive debt.
Debt issued to pay salaries is treated the same as debt issued to build a power plant that expands the economy’s growth capacity. Yet, the two have very different implications for future fiscal capacity and solvency.
Reason 3: It excludes non-debt-related liabilities.
Retirement and health commitments, for example, often exceed sovereign debt in some OECD countries — but, because they are future promises and not money already borrowed, they remain structurally invisible in cash accounting, regardless of the degree of consolidation of an institution’s other accounts.
Reason 4: It excludes all state assets.
Urban land, buildings, public services, oil and gas reserves, and mineral resources are completely absent. The ratio thus underestimates Senegal’s true ability to honor its commitments — especially since some of these assets remain inactive or underutilized today, and could generate revenue or be better valued if properly identified and mobilized.
Reason 5: It can skew decision-making.
A government seeking to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio may be tempted to sell valuable assets solely to improve this ratio — even when retaining these assets would better serve the country’s long-term interests.
Senegal’s solvency is better measured by its public net worth: the total assets minus the total liabilities. A single figure would capture everything the country owns, everything it owes, and the true budgetary leeway available for new commitments — something the debt ratio cannot do.
New Zealand provides the clearest precedent: after pioneering the formal independence of its central bank in 1989, it extended the same logic to fiscal policy five years later, enshrining public net worth in law as one of the indicators its government must use to calibrate its borrowing.
Why Senegal cannot yet produce such a balance sheet
Senegal’s accounts are not designed to produce such a balance sheet. The PEFA 2020 assessment found that the state’s accounts cannot reconstruct the full stock of assets and liabilities: land and building records are incomplete and not public; official debt excludes borrowing by public institutions and the two main social security institutions — accounting for the 13-point gap between the government’s 119% figure and the IMF’s 132%; and potential liabilities such as guarantees and exposure to PPPs remain largely unquantified. Only half of the UEMOA accounting directive is applied in practice. The infrastructure needed for a credible balance sheet does not yet exist.
What strengthening this capacity would achieve
If Senegal developed the capacity to produce audited financial statements in line with international standards and used public net worth as a key solvency indicator, it could expect several concrete benefits:
Advantage a) Improved perceived solvency.
Urban land and real estate could be valued at market value; oil and gas reserves, state-owned enterprises, and infrastructure would appear as recognized assets rather than invisible. This would give investors a more complete picture of the state’s balance sheet.
Advantage b) Lower borrowing costs.
Markets currently factor Senegal’s lack of transparency on its assets and liabilities as risk, resulting in a higher risk premium. Reducing this information deficit should, over time, narrow interest rate differentials.
Advantage c) Less reliance on austerity.
The IMF’s 2018 Fiscal Monitor showed that governments that better manage their assets can generate around 3% of GDP in additional annual revenue — comparable to what advanced economies receive from corporate taxes — mainly through reducing corruption and more efficient use of existing assets, not through new taxes or budget cuts. This is a medium-term gain that depends on the implementation of the reforms below; it complements, and does not replace, short-term budget consolidation.
Advantage d) Better incentives for efficiency.
In a net worth-based framework, subsidies and unproductive spending visibly erode the balance sheet, while productive investment visibly strengthens it. Decision-makers thus have a concrete measure to know whether their decisions are building or eroding national wealth.
Major institutional changes almost never happen outside a crisis. The current crisis in Senegal, painful as it may be, is precisely this kind of opening — and the challenge now is to use it to establish lasting institutional safeguards that reduce the risk of a repeat of such a crisis, not just to manage the present crisis.
Strengthening the capacity to borrow healthily — and the safeguards to preserve it
Realizing these benefits requires both the technical capacity to produce a balance sheet and institutional safeguards ensuring that it is used in the public interest. Senegal’s future depends on the success of this approach; it cannot be treated as a simple routine technical project. Five measures would help the country move in this direction.
Reform 1: Use the existing World Bank program as a vehicle.
Senegal and the World Bank have already agreed on a $115 million public financial management reform program (SEN-FISCALE/SEN-FINTRAC, approved in mid-2025), and the government is in discussions with the IMF on a broader program. This is an opportunity to consolidate a package of reforms — full adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), alignment of the chart of accounts with the IMF’s GFSM 2014 framework, and an integrated financial information management system throughout the administration — capable of producing full accrual financial statements in about three years. Given the stakes, a dedicated team should be established within the Prime Minister’s Office — not a symbolic unit, but a well-resourced monitoring team operating based on clear and published indicators, with regular monitoring. Such a reform will inevitably face resistance from those benefiting from the current opacity; only sustained monitoring at the highest level will overcome it.
Reform 2: Link future spending decisions before temptation arises.
Like most people, policymakers are tempted to defer painful decisions. In Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Ulysses knew his ship would have to pass near the Sirens, whose song lured sailors to their death. Knowing he would not resist the temptation at the time, he had himself tied to the mast by his crew and had his sailors’ ears plugged with wax, so the ship could pass safely, no matter how much he begged to be released. Senegal needs a budgetary equivalent: a rule that ties the government’s hands before the temptation arises, rather than relying on willpower at the moment of temptation. Specifically, this requires a constitutional rule governing how Senegal accumulates its debt — a variant of what is known internationally as a “golden rule”: borrowing only for investment, never for funding current expenses. The UK currently applies exactly this type of rule, as part of its Charter for Budget Responsibility, requiring current expenses to be covered by revenues while borrowing is reserved for investment. For Senegal, this means that recurring expenses must be funded, on average, by current revenues over the course of a presidential term — and not each year in isolation, which would deprive the state of the flexibility needed to manage normal economic cycles — and any new debt can only be issued for self-financing projects, including investments in human capital such as education and health, provided that each is accompanied by clear and measurable outcome indicators to assess its return. A project is self-financing if its social return, properly measured, exceeds the cost of the debt that finances it. Because such a stringent rule must survive political changes and resist weakening through ordinary legislative means, it must have constitutional status, not just inclusion in an organic law on finance.
Reform 3: Depoliticize project selection.
Senegal already has a project evaluation body, but the PEFA 2020 assessment found that it operates by ministerial decree, without defined selection criteria, and does not produce any project rankings — exactly the gap an independent commission would fill. This idea is based on the work of Richard C. Koo, Chief Economist at the Nomura Research Institute and author of The Pursued Economy, who has proposed exactly this type of commission for what he calls “pursued economies” — economies where private borrowers have disappeared and the state must step in as a lender of last resort. According to Koo, such a commission optimizes the chances of selecting truly productive and quickly financeable projects, at a time when borrowing costs are exceptionally low. Unlike Senegal’s current setup, this commission would be created by law, with published criteria, and the government could only reject its recommendations by publicly exposing its reasons.
Reform 4: Establish independent budget oversight.
The UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), established in 2010, offers a model worth emulating: an independent body empowered to challenge the government’s own budget projections and provide Parliament and the public with an independent assessment of budget policy, shielded from daily political pressures. A Senegalese equivalent, also created by ordinary law, would create the sustained pressure needed to demand greater transparency from decision-makers.
Reform 5: Professionally manage public assets, at a distance from politics.
Senegal could seek technical assistance from Singapore to create a Temasek-inspired holding company — governed by an independent board, remunerated, operating with private sector discipline, with the sole mandate of maximizing the value of the assets under its management, including divesting from unprofitable activities. Temasek’s balance sheet illustrates what rigorous asset management can achieve: its portfolio was valued at around S$434 billion (approximately US$324 billion) as of March 31, 2025, generating substantial annual dividends for its shareholder, the Singaporean state. It is important to be clear about what such an institution is, and what it is not. A Temasek-style holding company would manage Senegal’s existing commercial and real assets — land, buildings, state-owned enterprises, infrastructure — to maximize their return. This is a different instrument from a sovereign wealth fund dedicated to managing new oil and gas revenues, which Senegal is also developing. The two pursue distinct goals and should not be confused; Senegal should not seek to reinvent either from scratch when it can draw on five decades of Singaporean experience, potentially through a multi-year technical assistance agreement with Temasek itself. Like the independent commission and budget council mentioned above, such a holding company could be created by ordinary law, without requiring constitutional revision.
A challenge that goes beyond Senegal
Senegal’s case is illustrative, not exceptional. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, the same pattern repeats: governments publish a debt ratio without a balance sheet to support it, leaving citizens, markets, and decision-makers to debate solvency based on an indicator that cannot actually settle the question. The debt-to-GDP ratio will continue to produce more heat than light as long as it remains the primary lens for evaluating budget sustainability on the continent.
The solution is not simply to declare net worth a better indicator — it is to build the two elements that make it usable. The first is technical: the accounting and statistical infrastructure — accrual accounting based on IPSAS standards, chart of accounts aligned with the GFSM framework, integrated financial management systems — needed to produce a credible public balance sheet, as net worth makes no sense without it. The second is institutional: safeguards such as a binding borrowing rule, independent project selection, independent budget oversight, and professional asset management, which prevent the additional borrowing capacity revealed by net worth from being diverted once it exists. Without the first element, the indicator cannot be calculated. Without the second, transparency alone will not prevent bad borrowing — it will only make it more visible after the fact.
None of this requires Senegal, or any African government, to borrow less. It requires the ability to know, and then demonstrate, exactly what this borrowing has allowed to acquire.
