Senegal to cancel €700m contract with Saudi firm
Senegal has hinted at plans to withdraw from a 700 million-euro contract with a firm from the Middle Eastern giants; Saudi Arabia.
This is part of the new administration’s plan to pull out of deals they deem unfavorable signed under the former president. The Saudi deal in question involves the construction of a water desalination plant.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that the Saudi desalination project would be the first significant foreign agreement to be canceled since President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s inauguration in March.
The new Senegalese president had promised to examine and perhaps revoke agreements made by former president; Macky Sall whom he charged with undermining national sovereignty by selling off public assets for cheap.
According to a report by Sputnik; the project which was signed between Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and Senegal’s state water company SONES is one of the country’s largest private investments, and was intended to provide an estimated 400,000 cubic meters of water for the country’s capital city; Dakar.
“This project no longer fits with the government’s strategy options. We have decided not to pursue it,” the country’s water minister Cheikh Tidiane Dieye said in a statement to AFP.
The president stated on television late Wednesday that Senegal will pay Acwa 20 to 40 billion CFA francs ($33 million) each year for water from the project, whose construction has yet to begin.
“The price of the water risks increasing because of the technology being used and the required environmental studies were not carried out,” he said.
“In three or four years we will need more than 400,000 cubic meters per day because the population of Dakar is growing,” he added.
According to President Faye, lawyers are currently looking at the possible legal consequences of pulling out of the deal, which he believes won’t be too severe given the act that construction of the plant has not yet begun.
