Senegal’s National Assembly rejected the government’s revised 2026 budget on Tuesday, with 109 of the 132 lawmakers who took part backing a procedural motion that declared the text not fit for debate, 20 voting to keep it and three abstaining. The motion ended examination of the bill without a discussion of its contents, after the finance committee had already turned it down twice in October and a compromise attempt failed. The bill set revenues at 5,848.7 billion CFA francs and spending at 7,583.9 billion, for a deficit of 1,735.2 billion francs, or 7.6 percent of gross domestic product.
The vote deepens the standoff between the government and the Assembly, which is led by former prime minister Ousmane Sonko, whose Pastef party holds 130 of the 165 seats. Pastef lawmakers said the budget lacked credibility and disputed the stated deficit, while Finance Minister Cheikh Diba dismissed the objections as a pretext, according to RFI reporting cited by QNC News. The government had warned that deadlock would make it harder to raise money for 2026 obligations and to pay arrears, and passing the amended budget is seen as a condition for the IMF board to approve a new three year, $2.2 billion programme agreed at staff level in September. The IMF has put Senegal’s public debt at 132 percent of GDP at the end of 2024.