Faced with the deterioration of its sovereign rating, Senegal is relaunching the rebasing of its GDP. It is a technical operation that aims to better reflect its real economy, but raises skepticism among some analysts

The Senegalese Ministry of Finance announced on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, the launch of an exercise to review the gross domestic product (GDP), in response to a further deterioration of its sovereign rating. An accounting operation with potentially significant repercussions for its debt ratios, but which does not dispel doubts about the sustainability of its public finances

Last year, Senegal revealed the existence of billions of dollars in previously undeclared debts, leading the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to suspend its lending program and triggering a series of downgrades and a sharp fall in its sovereign bonds on the markets.

The IMF is still waiting for definitive information on the extent of these reporting errors and the mechanisms that allowed them, before considering a possible resumption of its program with the West African country.

The government is currently working on an “exercise to review the GDP base”, the results of which should be published in the coming months, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement.

Updating the base year used to calculate a country's economic output is an internationally recognized practice. It aims to take into account the emergence of new sectors and other developments, but sometimes raises questions among economists when this leads to a marked improvement in the debt/GDP ratio