By Rodrigo Campos
(Reuters) -The International Monetary Fund said it was assessing the viability of Senegal’s financing strategy as it looks to finalize an agreement on reforms to underpin a new program, an IMF official said on Thursday.
A team of officials from the IMF completed a mission to Dakar without outlining a new support package after the previous one was suspended following findings of debt misreporting.
Political infighting and disagreements with the Fund over a possible debt restructuring have weighed on the country’s bonds, some of which hit record low prices this week.
On Friday, the 2031 dollar issue fell more than 3 cents to 64.125 cents on the dollar, on track for a record low close according to LSEG data. It ended last year around 90 cents.
Part of assessing the viability of Senegal’s financing strategy was coming up with measures that would help reduce vulnerabilities around debt, said IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack, including centralizing debt management operations, improving transparency and strengthening overall fiscal controls.
Kozack said the approach to resolving the debt misreporting would involve measures taken by Senegalese authorities, and that the Fund would not request any early repayment of obligations.
The Fund was also still working on finalizing its joint debt sustainability analysis with the World Bank, based on revised macroeconomic and debt data, Kozack added.
However, the question of how the country should proceed to tackle its suffocating debt burden was one for the government to answer, she added.
“The choice and the specific nature of how to deal with debt and any debt operations and whether to seek a restructuring, for example, is a sovereign decision for the Senegalese authorities,” Kozack said in a scheduled press briefing.
Senegal’s international bond prices have been pressured lower this week after Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said over the weekend that Fund officials were pushing for a restructuring of Senegal’s debt – a move he said the government would not accept.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos in New York; editing by Diane Craft and Philippa Fletcher)
