By Lansana Gagny SAKHO Adm.A, C.M.C, President of the Circle of Public Administrators | Chairman of APIX-SA.
We cannot distribute wealth that we do not produce
2026 Amended Finance Bill (PLFR): Submitted to the National Assembly on September 18, 2026, the PLFR 2026 revises the growth from 5% to 2.7%, reduces revenues by 451.4 billion CFA francs and cuts investment by 555 billion as an adjustment variable. Meanwhile, energy subsidies soar from 250 to 790.3 billion CFA francs and the wage bill reaches 1,532.8 billion CFA francs.
There is a simple economic truth that political speeches and union demands stubbornly refuse to integrate: we cannot distribute wealth that we do not produce. This truth, formulated with the brutality that the situation requires, is at the heart of the crisis facing Senegal. A country rated Caa2 by Moody’s, whose FDI collapsed to 37 million dollars in 2025, whose debt exceeds 26,000 billion CFA francs, and whose interest payments absorb 23.7% of revenues, this country cannot simultaneously increase its public servants, maintain its energy subsidies, and claim economic recovery.
Senegal has been living beyond its means for years. Not because its citizens are too demanding, their needs are legitimate. But because its operating expenses have been built on growth and revenue assumptions that reality has never confirmed, in a budget governance context that has allowed structures and remunerations disconnected from any logic of performance and any serious international comparison to thrive.
The reality imposed by the numbers: a state that consumes more than it produces
The numbers of Senegal’s budgetary adjustment leave no room for ambiguity. The public deficit of 13.4% of GDP in 2024, more than four times the WAEMU ceiling, did not deepen by accident. It is the result of a structure of public spending where the civil service wage bill has become, over the years, the first incompressible item. Absolute paradox: the wage bill of the Senegalese civil service is now higher than that of the formal private sector in a country where the private sector should be the engine of growth and employment.
This structural imbalance means that the Senegalese state is devoting an increasing share of scarce resources to remunerating itself at the expense of investments in infrastructure, quality education, health, and public services that citizens truly expect. Every additional franc of wage bill not funded by revenue growth is a franc borrowed at the regional market rate of 8-9%, to be repaid by future generations with interest.
What a Senegalese parastatal CEO earns vs a director of administration in France
To understand the extent of the disconnect between the salaries of the Senegalese public sector and the country’s real wealth, a benchmark is necessary not with comparable developing countries, but with France, whose administrative model has greatly influenced the Senegalese civil service.
A CEO of a Senegalese parastatal entity such as CDC, PETROSEN, SENELEC, AIBD earns between 5 and 12 million CFA francs per month, excluding benefits in kind. With a company vehicle, company housing, representation expenses, per diems, and various allowances, the total remuneration can reach 15 to 20 million CFA francs monthly all inclusive.
In France, a central administration director of category A+ earns between 5,000 and 8,000 euros gross monthly, equivalent to 3.3 to 5.2 million CFA francs. A regional prefect, one of the highest positions in the French civil service, earns around 7,500 euros gross, equivalent to 4.9 million CFA francs. Benefits in kind are strictly regulated and valued on the payslip.
The ratio is revealing: a CEO of a Senegalese parastatal company can earn two to four times the salary of a French regional prefect in a country with a GDP per capita thirty times lower than that of France. In terms of purchasing power parity adjusted to real GDP, to be equivalent to the relative standard of living of a French prefect, a Senegalese parastatal CEO should earn approximately 150,000 to 250,000 CFA francs per month. The gap between this figure and reality is the most accurate indicator of the disconnect between Senegalese public salaries and the country’s real wealth.
This benchmark is an institutional diagnosis. The disconnect between the salaries of the Senegalese public sector leadership and the country’s real wealth is unsustainable. It is even less sustainable when these salaries are financed by borrowing, which means that Senegal borrows at 8-9% on the regional market to pay salaries that exceed those of equivalent rank officials in countries with a GDP thirty times higher.
Other symptoms of the same problem: pensions, scholarships, and luxury cars
Beyond the wage bill and energy subsidies, three other examples illustrate with documented precision the same disconnect between Senegal’s public spending and the country’s financial capacity.
The first concerns university professors’ pensions. In Senegal, a university professor retires with approximately 80% of their last salary, one of the highest rates in the world for a non-contributory exceptional scheme. This advantage is not the result of additional contributions or a specific capitalization scheme. It is the result of union demands that have obtained, over the decades, benefits that the state has never refused because they were politically costly to refuse. In France, the replacement rate for a retiring category A civil servant is approximately 55 to 60% of the last salary index in a country with a GDP per capita 30 times higher. The question is not whether university professors deserve a good retirement. The question is whether a poor country can afford a retirement scheme that rich countries cannot afford for their own officials.
The second example is that of universalized student scholarships. Senegal allocates approximately 120 billion CFA francs per year to student scholarships and allowances, a budget that has gradually been extended to all students enrolled in public universities, regardless of social conditions and academic performance. The striking comparison is with Ivory Coast, where a larger student population than Senegal’s receives less than 40 billion CFA francs in scholarships, awarded based on merit and documented social conditions.
The third example is perhaps the most symbolic because it concerns the men and women who are supposed to be the guardians of the budget temple: the members of the National Assembly. Their first reflex after being elected was to acquire vehicles worth 50 million CFA francs each in a country with a GDP per capita of around 1,600 dollars, where 35% of the population lives below the poverty line, and where the state has just cut 555 billion in investment from its amended budget. The budget of the National Assembly for 2025 was 22.4 billion CFA francs, up 11% from the previous year. The representatives of the people who vote for budgetary restrictions begin by exempting themselves from these restrictions. This signal is devastating not only morally but also economically: it tells unions, civil servants, and citizens that adjustment is for others.
Energy subsidies: a well-documented downward spiral
The debate on energy subsidies perfectly illustrates the same contradiction. Between December 2025 and August 2026, Senegal devoted 245 billion CFA francs to supporting fuel and electricity prices, an expense that would have reached 1,069 billion without the partial tariff adjustment in the meantime. These subsidies are politically popular but economically disastrous.
Economically disastrous because they heavily subsidize the wealthiest households that consume more energy and fuel, at the expense of the poorest populations who would need targeted transfers more. Economically disastrous because they discourage energy efficiency and investments in renewable energies. And economically disastrous because they are financed by debt, worsening the deficit, degrading the sovereign rating, and making access to capital more expensive for Senegalese businesses.
Unions and denial of reality: a shared responsibility
It would be convenient and unfair to blame unions alone for this situation. They defend the interests of their members, which is their role. But defending sectoral interests in a country on the brink of financial collapse, without considering the overall macroeconomic reality, is confusing corporatist solidarity with civic responsibility.
When public sector unions demand salary increases in a country where the public wage bill already exceeds that of the formal private sector, where the public deficit was 13.4% of GDP, and where the sovereign rating is Caa2, they are not defending their members in the long term. They are defending their purchasing power today at the expense of the state’s solvency tomorrow. This calculation is short-sighted because an insolvent state can no longer pay any salaries, public or private.
The responsibility is shared: with successive governments that have validated unsustainable salary structures to buy social peace, with public administrators who have allowed unregulated benefits in kind to flourish, and with a public opinion that, lacking clear information on the reality of public finances, continues to believe that the state’s coffers are bottomless.
What real recovery truly requires: the truth that nobody says
A credible and sustainable budget recovery requires telling the truth not in technical IMF documents, but in the Senegalese public space, in simple language, with concrete numbers. This truth has several aspects that political leaders generally avoid formulating together.
The first necessary decision is a public and comprehensive audit of remuneration in the parastatal sector with the publication of salary scales, valued benefits in kind, and various allowances. Transparency is the first condition of any credible rebalancing: we cannot reform what we do not have the courage to name.
The second decision concerns the capping of parastatal remuneration, indexed to GDP per capita according to the model of international financial institutions. A Senegalese parastatal CEO cannot earn 30 times the GDP per capita when a French prefect earns 3 times that amount. This ratio must become a principle of public remuneration organization not to impoverish leaders but to anchor public remuneration in the economic reality of the country it serves.
The third decision is the radical targeting of energy subsidies: replacing price subsidies that primarily benefit wealthier households that consume more energy with direct and targeted transfers to the most vulnerable households. This rebalancing would reduce budget costs while improving the social efficiency of spending. The PLFR 2026, which increases energy subsidies to 790.3 billion CFA francs, demonstrates the urgency of this reform.
The fourth decision is a freeze on public service recruitment coupled with a systematic review of staff numbers not to weaken public services but to ensure that each position corresponds to a real and documented need, and that the wage bill of 1,532 billion CFA francs is compatible with the state’s actual financing capacity.
The fifth decision, finally, is the one that underpins all others: a social dialogue based on the reality of the numbers. We cannot ask unions to adapt their demands to a reality that is not shown to them. Publishing an accessible annual report on the state of public finances, the real cost of the wage bill, and the actual budgetary leeway is a condition of truth without which no lasting social pact is possible.
Economic sovereignty begins with budget honesty
Senegal needs a pact of truth. A pact between the state, unions, the private sector, and citizens, based on a simple reality: wealth is created before it is distributed. A state that distributes what it has not produced borrows against the future of its children. A union that demands increases in an insolvent state jeopardizes the jobs of its members. A public opinion that rejects budget adjustment rejects recovery.
True economic sovereignty the one that speeches proclaim but actions have not yet built begins with this courage: telling Senegalese that the country is living beyond its means, that recovery requires shared and fair sacrifices, and that those who have benefited most from past generosity must contribute the most to present recovery.
The most modest civil servants are not the problem. The overpaid senior parastatal management in a poor country, the subsidies that benefit the wealthiest, the unregulated benefits in kind, the structures created to reward political loyalty rather than to serve citizens that is the problem. And that is the branch on which Senegal is sawing.
Sources
• IMF Staff-level agreement Senegal, ECF 36 months, 2.2 billion USD, September 1, 2026
• Moody’s Senegal downgrade decision Caa2, August 28, 2026
• Forvis Mazars Report on the Senegalese parastatal sector audit, July 2026
• Jubbanti Koom Plan Republic of Senegal, July 2025
• BCEAO Annual report on public finances in the WAEMU 2025
• INSEE / DGAFP (France) Salary scales of the State civil service 2026
• World Bank Report on public wage bill in Sub-Saharan Africa 2025
• UNCTAD World Investment Report 2026
Lansana Gagny SAKHO Adm.A, C.M.C
President of the Circle of Public Administrators | Chairman of APIX-SA
Secretary-General of CAVIE
Expert in public governance & Economic intelligence
The price of illusory autonomy We cannot distribute wealth that we do not produce .
