Senegal’s government has suspended all non-essential foreign travel by ministers and top officials, warning of “extremely \u200bdifficult” times ahead as the United States (US) -Israeli conflict with Iran \u200cdrives global oil prices higher, straining the nation’s budget.<\/p>\n
The war and Iran’s effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz have \u200broiled global energy markets, sending the price of \u200bbenchmark Brent crude soaring and pushing governments around \u2060the world to take steps to mitigate the \u200bnegative impacts.<\/p>\n
Addressing a youth event in the coastal town \u200bof Mbour on Friday evening, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko pointed to oil trading at about $115 a barrel, nearly twice the $62 per \u200bbarrel assumed in Senegal’s budget projections.<\/p>\n
“No Minister in \u200bmy government will leave the country unless it is for an \u200cessential \u2060mission related to the work we are currently undertaking,” he said, announcing that he had already cancelled his own planned trips to Niger, Spain and France.<\/p>\n
Governments across \u200bthe West African \u200bregion and \u2060globally have scrambled to respond to the crisis with measures including fuel price increases, subsidies, and \u200bremote work.<\/p>\n
Sonko cited such measures as justification \u200bfor debt\u2011laden \u2060Senegal’s own steps.<\/p>\n
He said additional measures would be announced next week, with the Energy and Mines Minister expected to \u2060address \u200bthe nation in the coming days \u200bto detail efforts to mitigate the impact of the price shock.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27027,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-30785","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Sonko cited such measures as justification \u200bfor debt\u2011laden \u2060Senegal's own steps.","published_date":"","news_description":"Sonko cited such measures as justification \u200bfor debt\u2011laden \u2060Senegal's own steps.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30786,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30785\/revisions\/30786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}