By Portia Crowe
DAKAR -The International Monetary Fund is not planning to vote on Friday on a debt misreporting waiver that would let Senegal access fresh cash, despite the subject being discussed at a board meeting, two sources close to the matter told Reuters.
The country has been expecting the waiver since May, but it has yet to complete certain criteria needed for a formal board vote, the sources said.Â
The IMF froze Senegal’s previous $1.8 billion lending programme after the country’s then-newly elected leaders uncovered billions in unreported debt – a sum that has since ballooned to more than $11 billion. Senegal hopes for a waiver to allow the IMF to disburse new money under a new programme.
Both sources said that discussions on a waiver were going well, and the waiver was likely to come this year. But a formal board meeting is needed to sign off on it and still has not been scheduled.Â
An IMF spokesperson said Friday’s meeting was “intended to update Executive Directors on Senegal’s situation and on the next steps of engagement, including the imminent launch of discussions on a new Fund-supported programme.”
“As part of the efforts to reinforce governance and transparency, the authorities have committed to certifying the final debt figures, investigating public-financial-management shortcomings, and tracing transactions related to the misreporting in coordination with the judiciary.”
A spokesperson for Senegal’s finance ministry declined to comment.
The IMF said on Thursday it would begin formal negotiations with Senegal over a new lending programme this month. But no further lending is possible until the misreporting case is resolved, and without a waiver, Senegal could be forced to repay money from the previous programme.
The debt misreporting is one of the largest ever uncovered during an active IMF monitoring programme, and the Fund has a list of measures that Senegal must take before it brings the waiver to the board.
Among them is agreeing the terms of a new technical assistance audit focused on public financial management, the sources said, though that audit itself does not need to be completed before the IMF grants the waiver.
(Reporting by Portia Crowe, editing by Libby George and Rodrigo Campos)
