Tough love: IMF spanks Dakar budgeting but promises "exogenous shocks" relief

In a report issued yesterday, the International Monetary Fund revealed much about Senegal's fiscal problems over the last year. But, after hard work over the last six months or so, the IMF concludes that Senegal has tackled "extrabudgetary expendi-tures" and nonpayment of its bills, so much so that the IMF approved relief from the IMF's "Exogenous Shocks Fund." Indeed "exogenous shocks"-- the high oil prices and food shortages-- were evidently a big reason for the government's "off-budget" spending, to the detriment of contractors, such as those in Touba that we have posted about before.

The actual report is titled:

"Senegal: Second Review Under the Policy Support Instrument, Request for a Twelve-Month Arrangement Under the Exogenous Shocks Facility, and Request for Waivers and Modification of Assessment Criteria—Staff Report; Staff Statement; Press Release on the Executive Board Discussion; and Statement by the Executive Director for Senegal" and dated January 2009.

Nestled in the economists' jargon are many revelations of what has been happening with Senegal's budget. We'll try to post further, but meanwhile here is one of the conditions the IMF is putting on "exogenous shock" relief, pertaining to an audit of the government's actual indebtedness to its private contractors:

“No payments will be made to the private sector for any extrabudgetary expenditure before the audit has established the nature of claims and specified the goods and services that were provided and their unit cost. To prevent a recurrence of such spending, the government will impose sanctions on employees found to be at fault and apply a discount factor to the claims of private firms that agreed to provide goods or services on unlawful terms. The government will pay claims recognized on the basis of the audit only after authorization by a budget law providing for simultaneous reductions of appropriations for other expenditure items.” (IMF report, page 46, item 26.)

In other words: contractors who do work on the promise of money that hasn't been legally authorized will take their chances.