On September 14, 2016 in Abidjan, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) approved a loan of 34.78 million units of account (approximately 28.6 billion FCFA) to the Republic of Senegal to fund Phase 1 of the Support Programme for Reform of Local Development (PARDL-I).
PARDL-I is the first phase of a series of two operations offering programmatic budget support for the financial years 2016 and 2017 with an overall indicative funding envelope of 44.78 million UA (approximately 36.8 billion CFA francs). PARDL-I provides the programme's multi-year framework and a list of reforms considered to be indicative triggers for the second phase (PARDL-II). PARDL-I is aligned with the Emerging Senegal Plan 2014-2035 and its Priority Action Plan (2014-2018).
PARDL-I, as per the Country Strategy Paper 2016-2020, which has also just been approved by the Board, comes further to previous budget support, but with the particular feature that it provides holistic support for a new generation of reforms. This programme is intended to support the efforts of Senegal to implement the Emerging Senegal Plan (PSE) in order to create a dynamic of sustained endogenous growth with the goal of reducing inequality between urban and rural areas. Thus, the effectiveness of the programme of reforms will contribute to the development of the local economy, to opening up disadvantaged rural areas and to building the ownership and empowerment of rural communities with regard to the construction and maintenance of local socio-economic infrastructure.
This operation was prepared in close collaboration with development partners in general and most particularly with members of the Budget Support Arrangement Framework (ACAB), which all have similar budget support arrangements planned for 2016 and 2017. Members of civil society and actors in the private sector in Senegal were also consulted.
To achieve its goals, PARDL-I is structured around two complementary components. The first is the strengthening of decentralization through improvements to the institutional and regulatory framework of the reform known as the Act III of Decentralization and strengthening the funding mechanisms of decentralization to ensure better management of transferred skills and the sustained development of local communities. The second is the promotion of the development of infrastructure and local entrepreneurship through improving the institutional framework for managing water and electricity infrastructure and local roads to facilitate people's access to this infrastructure and the facilitation of the emergence of local entrepreneurship for greater local inclusivity
