The visit of the Tunisian businessmen is part of the Senegal-Tunisia Economic Forum which ends on Friday.
By Abdourahmane Diallo
Since Thursday, Dakar has been hosting a multisectoral prospecting mission of Tunisian business leaders.
Their stay, which is supposed to lead to investment decisions in joint ventures, was an opportunity for Senegal’s Minister of the Economy, Planning and Cooperation Amadou Hott to explain the advantages offered by his country to foreign investors.
Hott, who presided over the opening of the forum, immediately indicated that investment in Senegal is supported by an attractive incentive policy.
In this regard, he stressed, tax relief measures and other incentives are granted to investors through the Investment Code currently being revised.
In addition, the minister mentioned the establishment of industrial platforms through the Special Economic Zones and agropoles.
With these platforms, investors benefit from service packages and incentives to operate faster and more competitively.
Furthermore, for the revival of the post-Covid-19 economy, Senegal has adopted a new framework for public-private partnerships (PPP).
According to Hott, this framework adopts best practices and has flexibility as well as innovative tools to “de-risk” projects through good preparation.
Reforms have also been initiated in key sectors to increase the competitiveness and attractiveness of the country, the former African Development Bank (AfDB) official said.
“Being an open and non-exclusive country, we want the opportunities we offer to be known by investors in Tunisia, a friendly country sharing many values with Senegal,” Hott explained.
All these measures he said should allow Tunisian economic operators to manufacture in Senegal products imported from Tunisia to stabilise the balance of trade.
According to the minister, the pandemic has highlighted the need for Africa to boost private investment in order to produce more in sectors of sovereignty and be less dependent on global value chains.
To this end, states must be more mobilised to support their private sectors through reforms and authorities must mobilise more concessional resources.
These can be retro-ceded to local banks to feed other innovative financing mechanisms allowing the private sector to access credit at lower cost, said Hott.
Finally, he invited Senegalese and Tunisian investors to better organise themselves if they are “to take advantage of these great prospects for a revival of our economies with a strong African private sector that invests more and better.”
ARD/id/lb/as/APA