In Cote d’Ivoire, after months of talks with civil servants unions, the Ouattara government has promised on July 6 to pay the workers FCFA249 billion (433 million $) of arrears.

“The government made us an offer to pay 249 billion over eight years, but we have not yet signed anything”, said Gnagna Zadi, president of the Platform for Professional Organisations of the public sector. “We will wait to see that it’s paid”, he added.

This was confirmed by a source from the Prime Minister’s office, Reuters reported. According to the press agency, the government’s offer is exactly what the workers had demanded.

Since last January, the public sector which employs more than 200,000 workers has been crippled by several strikes. To these add multiple mutinies by soldiers who were demanded payment of bonuses by the government. These paired with of fall by about 35% of global cocoa prices, the government had no choice but scale down its annual budget by 9% to better deal with the social tensions and meet its economic objectives for the year.

WAEMU’s leading economy forecast a growth of 6.8% this year for its economy. However, it must overcome quite a large deficit in its trade balance of 2016. In spite of all these challenges, the nation has the trust of its investors who still show great interest in its sovereign bonds.

Fiacre E. Kakpo