Senegal's debt falls by 10% after recalculations

Senegal has announced a recalculated gross domestic product resulting in improved debt metrics, a move the finance ministry has described as an attempt to give a more accurate picture of the economy as it grapples with a crisis over unreported debt.

Senegal's GDP recalculation was published on Tuesday by the country's National Agency for Statistics and Demography.

The new 2021 GDP figure is 17,316 billion CFA francs, up 13.5% from the previous estimate, and the new public debt figure for 2021 is 80%, down from 90.8%. The document does not give a more recent debt figure.

The adjustments reflect inclusion of emerging activities such as digital financial services, the oil and gas industry and cashew production, according to the document.

GDP ratio

The West African country announced in July it had begun the recalculation using an updated base year from 2014 to 2021. That announcement came in a statement following a credit rating, which warned that the government's debt-to-GDP ratio had jumped to almost 120% at the end of 2024.

Updating the base year that a country uses to calculate its economic output is an internationally accepted practice.

It is meant to take into account new emerging industries and other developments, but it can raise questions among economists when it results in big debt-to-GDP ratio improvements.