Seldom has a Senegalese government seen its own majority stand so firmly in its way. On Friday, 23 October, the National Assembly’s Finance and Budget Control Committee, chaired by Alphonse Mané Sambou, threw out bill no. 40/2026, the supplementary finance law for 2026. The two amendments the executive had tabled in a bid to rescue the text met the same fate, even though Economy, Finance and Planning Minister Cheikh Diba and his deputy in charge of the budget, Bassirou Sarr, were in the room to defend them.
The outcome came as no surprise. As early as Monday, 19 October, after a meeting of party officials, Ousmane Sonko had made his position clear. Head of both Pastef and the National Assembly since leaving the prime minister’s office in May, he described the bill put forward by Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Lô’s government as unacceptable in its current form, despite President Bassirou Diomaye Faye having asked for it to be fast-tracked. His main objection was the cut to energy subsidies: the bill caps them at 552 billion CFA francs for 2026, a 30% reduction from the 790 billion originally planned. Sonko links this choice to the agreement with the IMF, which reportedly calls for subsidies to be held at 1% of GDP.
The day after the committee vote, the Pastef-Les Patriotes parliamentary group spelled out its conditions in a statement. First, it wants a rethink of the cuts hitting health, education, vocational training, water supply, infrastructure and industry, with savings to come mainly from non-essential spending. Second, lawmakers want the subsidy reduction offset by lower fuel taxes and cheaper electricity production, so that households are not left to foot the bill.
The third demand concerns the CERP, an emergency response project. The majority is asking to see the agreements signed with the World Bank and wants to know where the 120 billion CFA francs tied to it come from and how they will be spent. Fourth comes the cost of running the state: Pastef is pushing for faster streamlining of the parastatal sector, with 19 entities to be abolished and net savings of at least 55 billion CFA francs over three years, along with tighter oversight of special funds. Finally, the group wants the deficits forecast for 2026 and 2027 to be justified, and the release of the General Inspectorate of Finance’s audit of non-financial debt as well as the report by the firm Forvis Mazars.
Behind these demands lies a broader message. Majority lawmakers insist that parliament is not there to rubber-stamp the executive’s choices, particularly when those choices bind public finances for years to come. In their view, fixing the budget must neither erode purchasing power nor sacrifice the investments on which the country’s development depends.
The door has not been shut. The group says it is willing to talk with the government ahead of the plenary session scheduled for Tuesday, 27 October. The stakes go well beyond a parliamentary standoff. Senegal is carrying debt that stood at 132% of GDP at the end of 2024, part of which had been concealed, and the African Development Bank has just ranked it the most indebted country in West Africa. A government unable to get its revised budget through its own majority risks sending mixed signals to creditors and to investors on the regional WAEMU market.