Senegal: President Bassirou Diomaye Faye Outlines His Priorities

Dakar — “I am telling you here, there will be a renegotiation of contracts relating to natural resources,” this is one of the strong announcements that the President of the Republic of Senegal, HE Bassirou Diomaye Faye, made during his interview with the press on Saturday, July 13, 2024.

After 100 days in office, the President of the Republic considered it necessary to take stock.

According to the president, audits will be done on the contracts that will be renegotiated, exercises that they have already started with Woodside. “There are things that are contested, in particular on the costs invested and the company agrees on that,” said President Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

In the same line, the Head of State confided in the priorities of his government in respect of the payment of taxes. “As long as I am at the head of this country, two things will remain priorities: contributing to the collective effort by paying taxes while ensuring that they go to the populations, as the law provides,” declared Faye.
The remaining priority is the reduction of the prices of necessities, an action that interests the population the most.

On this, the president said: “We went through an exercise of reallocating financial resources between priority needs and those of less priority, to be able to reduce everyday consumption goods,” which cost the State 53.4 billion CFA francs.

Furthermore, regarding the High Council of the Judiciary, where some considered his statements ambiguous, he announced that his decision to remain or not on the council depends on the arguments put forward by the magistrates in support of their request.

Faye said that he wanted to redefine the framework of military cooperation with France without considering a “brutal break”, despite the reduction in French troops in Dakar in the past few months.

The president also said he is considering how he can play the role of neutral mediator between ECOWAS and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) because he is not associated with the sanctions that ECOWAS imposed on Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which led to the Sahel states withdrawing from the regional body.