(Bloomberg) -- Senegalese officials told international investors that an audit of the country’s finances will be ready in coming weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.
Officials from the Ministry of Finance said during a call on Tuesday that the government aims to implement any recommendations from the Court of Auditors on the findings of the probe, the people added, asking not to be named because the virtual meeting was private. The government did not specify when the court would deliver the recommendations, they said.
The audit is a key step for the West African country to negotiate a new loan from the International Monetary Fund. A $1.8 billion program agreed in 2023 is on hold after President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who took office last April, asked for checks of state finances that revealed the previous government had misstated some economic data.
Preliminary findings by the nation’s General Inspectorate of Finance on public finances between 2019 and early 2024 need to be certified by the court.
The IMF executive board was set to discuss Senegal’s data revisions this month, though the meeting could be delayed as the audit is still pending. The larger-than-reported public debt and deficit figures are considered by the fund as a so-called “misreporting” case.
A spokesperson from the Finance Ministry said the findings of the audit will be shared as soon as it’s ready. They declined to comment on the timing.
The officials on Tuesday’s call also told investors that Senegal is already in talks with the IMF to implement some corrective measures to prevent such issues in the future, like unifying the country’s debt management unit, the people said.
An IMF spokesperson said that “discussions with the Senegalese authorities are ongoing” but that it’s “premature to determine corrective measures” before the court’s report.
The investor call was organized by Bank of America, according to the people. A spokesperson for the bank declined to comment.
The review of Senegal’s finances over the past five years prompted Moody’s Ratings to downgrade its long-term foreign-currency credit score to B1, four steps below investment grade. Senegal’s dollar bonds have dropped amid the data controversy, with the 2048 notes trading at around 68 cents on the dollar as of Wednesday.
--With assistance from Katarina Höije.
(Updates with IMF comment in eight paragraph)
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