(Ecofin Agency) - Visiting Dakar, Senegal on 9-10 September 2015, Charles H. Rivkin (photo), Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business affairs, informed that the Senegalese project of becoming an emerging market by 2035 has the full support of the American administration.

“We fully support its Plan Sénégal Émergent and its other goals, and we are ready to support economic reforms, infrastructure development and other efforts from Senegal to attract investment from the private sector”, the American diplomat said.

Mr. Rivkin applauded the efforts spent by the Senegalese government to complete its economic transformation. He particularly highlighted the implementation of a special economic zone to promote private investment and the fact that Senegal is making progress in the ranking of the World Bank’s Doing Business initiative.

But like with many other sub-Saharan African countries, he noted that the country of President Macky Sall must face many challenges on energy, quality of implementation of public policies and infrastructure deficit. For the American diplomat, these challenges should not stand in the way of Small and Medium Enterprises promoters’ ingenuity. “As I said it recently during a conference in Abuja, small and medium enterprises, SMEs, are the main engines of prosperity in nearly all economies. It follows that what is good for them is also good for the whole economy”, commented Charles Rivkin.

The American dignitary finally announced an increase in the budget allocated to the Power Africa programme by the American president, an additional USD 6 billion, at the rate of USD 300 million per year, thus bringing its global commitment to USD 20 billion.

As part of this expansion, we have assigned a regional advisor for the Power Africa transactions to the World Bank office in Dakar. “This advisor will have the mission of helping Senegal eliminate the bottlenecks for private investment and coordinate the efforts from various organisations of the federal government of the United States aimed at supporting investment projects”, revealed Mr. Rivkin.