The Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber, NJ Ayuk, has said that financing economic opportunities for Senegalese local content in the energy sector would help meet the goals advocated by the country’s President, Macky Sall.
Ayuk disclosed this on Monday in a statement made available to Financial Street, stressing that access to capital, among others, provides opportunities in achieving the goals.
His words: “Financing economic opportunities for local content will help meet the goals and vision of the Local Content policies advocated by President Macky Sall. The road to shared economic prosperity in the oil and gas industry and Senegal travels through two-way streets, where all are included, and none are left in the margins of the marketplace.
“The quantifiable gaps in opportunity and in access to capital for local companies should define the agenda of the oil and gas industry execution of the upcoming projects.”
President Sall had in the first quarter of 2020 -though COVID-19 has since delayed the implementation of the reform, turned the country’s attention to its Economic and Social Resilience Programme, which seeks to encourage public-private partnerships, lend macroeconomic and financial assistance and support private sector recovery.
In an effort to increase financial inclusion, Senegal has also taken advantage of its strong mobile penetration, in which over 32 per cent of adults have a mobile money account.
According to the statement, Meso-finance, which aims to serve as the missing link for financing in emerging African economies by targeting companies whose needs cannot be met by microfinance or commercial banks, is an attractive model for small and medium-sized enterprises that struggle to invest in training and new equipment due to limited access to financial resources.
It added that several commercial banks, including Bank of Africa and Orabank, were currently implementing specific offers to target SME development across sectors, with the underlying goal of fuelling demand for petroleum-related services.
