Between 2014 and 2018, Subsaharan countries’ average public debt ratio to GDP increased from 32.4% to 45.9%, a report published last Wednesday by the World Economic Forum reveals.

According to the authors of the report, this increase is due to the trend in public expenditures after the 2004-2014 period which saw a continued reduction of public debt in the region.

"After the end of the commodity super-cycle in 2015, public revenues decreased, but public spending did not follow suit", the report revealed.

If some countries like Botswana (with a debt estimated at 15.6% of GDP) succeeded in controlling their finance, some others were unable to do so.

For instance, Zambia’s debt doubled between 2014 and 2015 and is actually estimated at 65.5% of GDP, Angola’s rose from 32.9% in 2013 to 79.8% in 2016 while Mozambique’s debt grew from 53.1% to 118.7% of GDP.

For the experts, this difficulty of most economies in the region to adjust to the decreasing revenues and control their fiscal policy will have "consequences in the attraction of private investments and the availability of public capital necessary to develop infrastructure, improve the education system and provide social services".

Let’s note that last May, IMF published a report warning of an increasingly unsustainable debt despite strong growth recently.

For 2018, World Bank decreased the region’s growth outlook from 3.1% to 2.7%.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou