DAKAR: A likely absolute majority for President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s Pastef party in Senegal’s legislative election would empower him to pursue his ambitious 25-year agenda, though his first challenge will be coming up with a budget amid a fiscal crisis.
Faye sought a clear parliamentary majority in Sunday’s vote to implement the reform agenda that helped sweep him to power in a landslide election victory in March.
But analysts say creating a budget catering both to his voters’ needs and to the International Monetary Fund, with which his government is currently in talks, will be challenging.
Former president Macky Sall, who headed an opposition coalition, on Monday congratulated Pastef on its win. Former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, who ran against Faye in the presidential election, also conceded defeat, as did other opposition leaders.

Senegal’s sovereign debt rose in price on Monday, Tradeweb data showed, while most other African nations’ bonds lost ground. The yield on its 2033 dollar bond was down about 10 basis points at 9.28 percent.
“If confirmed by the electoral bodies, Pastef’s victory could give a free hand in passing budgets and implementing its programmatic reforms,” said Wendyam Lankoande, a consultant at Africa Practice.
But, he noted, voters are “looking for quick solutions to unemployment, rising cost of living, and limited reach of public services in remote rural areas in the hinterland.” In September, a government audit revealed that Senegal’s debt and budget deficit were much wider than the previous administration had reported. A $1.9 billion IMF program agreed in June 2023 has been on hold since. Negotiations with the IMF to restart disbursements could last until mid-2025.
“We see Pastef’s majority as a positive development as it clears the path for President Faye and (Prime Minister Ousmane) Sonko to begin work on a budget for 2025 that aligns broadly with IMF requirements,” said Leeuwner Esterhuysen, senior economist at Oxford Economics Africa.
“That said, some of these requirements won’t necessarily go down well with Senegalese citizens.”
He said the Fund was likely to show some leniency, as it appears to have good relations with the new administration.

“We think the government may be able to delay the implementation of harsh measures such as removing VAT exemptions on farming inputs or increasing household electricity prices, while energy subsidies will be phased out gradually to limit the impact on consumers,” Esterhuysen said.

Rio de Janeiro: G20 leaders began arriving for a summit in Brazil on Monday to try reignite deadlocked climate talks and overcome their differences on the Middle East and Ukraine wars ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

US President Joe Biden will attend his last summit of the world’s leading economies, but as a lame duck leader eclipsed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the most influential leader at this year’s meeting.

Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is using his hosting duties to promote issues close to his heart, including fighting hunger and climate change and taxing the super-rich.

But the wars which have bitterly divided G20 members are also set to feature prominently in the discussions.

A Brazilian foreign ministry source said Monday that some countries wanted to renegotiate a draft summit communique.

“For Brazil and other countries the text is already finalized, but some countries want to open up some points on wars and climate,” he told AFP.

Biden’s decision Sunday to allow Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to strike targets inside Russia — a major policy shift — could prompt European allies to also review their stance.

G20 leaders are also under pressure to try rescue UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which have stalled on the issue of greater climate finance for developing countries.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for G20 members, who account for 80 percent of global emissions, to show “leadership” to facilitate a deal.

Security is tight for the gathering, which comes days after a failed bomb attack on Brazil’s Supreme Court in Brasilia by a suspected far-right extremist, who killed himself in the process.

The get-together will cap a farewell diplomatic tour by Biden which took him to Lima for a meeting of Asia-Pacific trading partners, and then to the Amazon in the first such visit for a sitting US president.

Biden, who has looked to burnish his legacy as time runs down on his presidency, insisted in the Amazon that his climate record would survive another Trump mandate.

All eyes at the stalled COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan are on Rio to break an impasse over how to raise $1 trillion a year for developing countries to cope with global warming.

Rich countries want fast-developing economies like China and Gulf states to also put their hands in their pockets.

The meeting comes in a year marked by another grim litany of extreme weather events, including Brazil’s worst wildfire season in over a decade, fueled by a record drought blamed at least partly on climate change.

At the last G20 in India, leaders called for a tripling of renewable energy sources by the end of the decade, but without explicitly calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels.

Conspicuously absent from the summit is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose arrest is sought by the International Criminal Court over the Ukraine war.

Lula, 79, told Brazil’s GloboNews channel on Sunday that he did not want the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to take the focus off global poverty.

“Because if not, we will not discuss other things which are more important for people that are not at war, who are poor people and invisible to the world,” he said.

The summit opens on Monday with Lula, a former steelworker who grew up in poverty, launching a “Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty.”

Brazil is also pushing for higher taxes on billionaires.

Lula had faced resistance to parts of his agenda from Argentinian President Javier Milei, a libertarian Trump uber-fan who met the Republican last week at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The head of the Argentine delegation, Federico Pinedo, told AFP that Buenos Aires has raised some objections and would not “necessarily” sign the text, however. He did not elaborate.

But the Brazilian foreign ministry source on Monday downplayed the likelihood of Argentina blocking a consensus.