Côte d’Ivoire's Economic Growth and Challenges on 64th Independence Anniversary

CÃ´te dâIvoire marks its 64th independence anniversary today on the back of sustained economic growth. Stanislas Zeze, the Chairman of Bloomfield Investment Corporation, joins me now to unpack the countryâs development and growth projections. Thanks a lot for joining us on the show today, Stanislas. Letâ²s start our conversation with the outpour of congratulatory messages from Africa and beyond to CÃ´te dâIvoire. And in terms of celebrating this now, down to the economic terms, we are seeing CÃ´te dâIvoire as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Prior to Covid, at about 2012 to 2019, we saw a sustained growth of about 8%, and after Covid, we are seeing 6% thereabout. Strong recovery so far. Walk us through the high points here in the last one year. As you said earlier, CÃ´te dâIvoire is one of the highest economic growth in Africa, and it has actually shown sustained economic growth with massive investment in infrastructure, economic infrastructure, which actually pulls the economy, the growth, towards the top. And the social political environment has greatly improved. As you know, CÃ´te dâIvoire actually came out of a post electoral heavy crisis in 2011, and then the countries are actually engaged in some sort of reconciliation. In 2015, the election was actually a rather calm 2020, a little bit of crisis. But basically, the social political environment is stable. The financial management has been, I mean, the management of the finance, public finance has been very, have been sustained. The government has put in place a very strong strategy to manage debts. Although today, when you take total debt to GDP, you remain at 58%, which is reasonable. I mean, the country is at a moderate level in terms of debt. However, the problem that we see, we foresee, is the capacity of CÃ´te dâIvoire to sustain its debt service. Today, CÃ´te dâIvoire is at 62% of its revenue in terms of debt on a yearly basis, which is very high. And that's provided for by its weaknesses in revenue collection. Why? Because the country remains highly informal in terms of economy. Ninety percent of the economy of CÃ´te dâIvoire is informal. So, what is being asked of CÃ´te dâIvoire is to actually extend the fiscal base in a way that it could collect more revenues. And with regard to the CÃ´te dâIvoire Reserve, the Reserve actually shrunk. They went from five, six months of import to 3.5 of import. So, all this put together actually give this economy â I mean, this economy is a good performer. However, there's a few areas of risk that needs to be looked at. Well, Stanislas, let's also talk about some of the challenges ahead, as CÃ´te dâIvoire hopes to beat the odds. Yes, we've heard from some of the greatest agencies and multilateral development partners like the World Bank, the IMF, with the stable outlook here from Fitch, and also the great projections from IMF and then the World Bank in terms of support and facility arrangements to ensure that the country can continue to measure up with all of the prospects ahead. What would you say are the top agenda for the President at this point in time, ensuring that we continue to have macroeconomic stability in the country going forward? Actually, in terms of internal and external financing, CÃ´te dâIvoire still benefits from a large flexibility from the international financial institution and the local financial institution. However, the real problem is this capacity to raise revenue. You can't continue to increase the tax on your private sector while you have a strong base that you can actually improve, which you're not doing now. I think that with regard to the social political stability, we have an upcoming election next year, and you have a serious reason to believe that there certainly will be tension. So in terms of perspectives, people remain very sceptical of this long-term stability. Stanislas, I'm talking about long-term stability as well now, and the influence of foreign parties now. Conversations still center as to how do we drive domestic investment, especially focusing on some of the cash crops here. CÃ´te dâIvoire has taken a bit of a hit. How do you see things panning out as the country looks forward to generating more revenue and also harnessing the different cash cows? The potential of the economic growth is actually very present, with the discovering of the new oil production in CÃ´te d'Ivoire and the gold production as well. So in terms of growth, the potential is there. And I think that the basis of the fundamental of the CÃ´te d'Ivoire economic employment, investors are not too worried about the long-term. They're rather worried about the short-term, because we're talking about President Ouattara engaging in a fourth mandate. He hasn't decided that yet, but everybody believes that it might go for a fourth term, which will create some kind of tension. But on a long-term basis, I think that investors believe that CÃ´te d'Ivoire has had the possibility of rebounding from crisis. So its capacity to absorb stock is very high. So people are not really worried about the long-term. They're certainly worried about the short-term, the upcoming presidential election. Yes, the elections definitely raised some level of uncertainty and concerns around that. But we'll leave the conversation here for now. Thank you so much for your time. That was Tanis Lazizi, the Chairman of Bloomfield Investment Corporation.

Côte d’Ivoire marks its 64th independence anniversary today on the back of sustained economic growth. Stanislas Zeze, the Chairman of Bloomfield Investment Corporation, joins CNBC Africa as we unpack the country’s development and growth projections.

Côte d’ivoire marks 64th independence anniversary

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Côte d’ivoire marks 64th independence anniversary

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