PASTEF Rejects Senegal’s Revised Budget, Threatening Debt Deal
Senegal’s political rupture has moved from private rivalry to an open vote over who will pay for the country’s debt crisis.
PASTEF, the party that controls 130 of the National Assembly’s 165 seats, rejected the government’s revised 2026 budget in committee on Friday, October 23. The decision puts President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s fiscal program in direct conflict with the parliamentary majority led by his former ally, Ousmane Sonko.
The party said it would not approve the bill in its current form. It cited “disagreements over certain budgetary decisions, the chosen financing arrangements and the insufficient guarantees provided to parliament.” PASTEF also said it remained ready to negotiate with the executive before the bill reaches a plenary vote.
This is not a symbolic rebellion. The government needs a credible budget to carry a $2.2 billion, 36-month International Monetary Fund program into force. That program anchors Senegal’s plan to restructure external debt under the G20 Common Framework. Without parliamentary approval, the timetable can slip, creditors can demand harder terms and the state can lose more room to protect public services.
The revised budget shows why the confrontation has become explosive. It cuts the government’s real-growth forecast to 2.7 percent from roughly 5 percent and widens the projected deficit to 7.6 percent of gross domestic product from 5.4 percent. Energy subsidies rise to 790.3 billion CFA francs—about $1.36 billion—more than triple the original allocation.
PASTEF argues that the government has chosen the wrong burden-sharing formula. Its parliamentary group has demanded another look at cuts affecting health, education, training, water infrastructure and other public investments. It also wants measures to protect household purchasing power, reduce energy costs on a durable basis, impose tighter budget transparency and rationalize state-owned enterprises.
Those demands go to the heart of the post-2024 political promise. Faye and Sonko won power by attacking corruption, dependency and the old governing order. They then inherited accounts far worse than the previous administration had disclosed. IMF figures put public debt at 132 percent of GDP at the end of 2024 after billions of dollars in borrowing had been misreported.
The debt revelation froze Senegal’s earlier IMF program and transformed a reform project into a struggle over austerity, sovereignty and institutional control. Faye later dismissed Sonko as prime minister. Sonko became president of the National Assembly, while PASTEF kept its overwhelming majority. The budget vote now gives that split a concrete weapon.
Neither side can escape the arithmetic. The executive cannot restructure debt, secure concessional financing and stabilize the public accounts without legislation. PASTEF cannot claim to defend living standards if a prolonged blockade starves the state of financing or deepens the squeeze on schools, hospitals, energy and water.
But the party’s refusal also exposes a real political danger in the government’s strategy. “Fiscal adjustment” often hides who loses clinics, scholarships, jobs or electricity support. PASTEF is forcing those choices into public view before international creditors and technocrats turn them into deadlines.
Prime Minister Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo said the revised framework aims to improve Senegalese living standards and scheduled a Sunday press conference to defend it. The next decisive moment is the plenary session. Parliament can amend the bill, the government can bargain, or both can harden their positions and push Senegal toward institutional paralysis.
The budget crisis is therefore bigger than Sonko versus Faye. It asks whether a heavily indebted African state can renegotiate with creditors without breaking the social mandate that brought its leaders to power. Senegal’s answer will be watched far beyond Dakar.
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