The International Monetary Fund has said that Senegal’s economy will grow 5% in 2021 thanks in part to solid industrial output.
The latest IMF forecast, on Wednesday, is an upward revise of a previous forecast of 3.5% growth for this year.
In a statement, the Fund said it had reached a staff-level agreement with the West African country, which could pave the way for disbursements of around $180 million under an existing loan agreement.
Senegal is in the process of recovering from the recession caused by the pandemic, which slowed the country’s real GDP growth to 1.5% in 2020 from 4.4% a year earlier.
“Senegal’s economic rebound through September 2021 was stronger than envisaged, even as the country faced a third wave of the pandemic in the third quarter, on the back of solid industrial and services production,” the IMF said in a statement.
It predicted that economic growth would reach 5.5% in 2022, peaking at about 10% in 2023-24 with the start of oil and gas production, and easing to around 6% over the medium term.