Alioune Guèye opposes SENELEC subsidiary creation, calls for national unity
Alioune Guèye, former Director General of PETROSEN Holding SA, has expressed strong opposition to the announced creation of subsidiaries for SENELEC, urging all Senegalese citizens to unite against the move. Guèye criticizes the Minister of Energy and Petroleum for revealing what he describes as increasingly harmful government policies. He highlights the minister's statement that SENELEC's subsidiary creation is unrelated to the IMF or restructuring, which Guèye finds concerning. Guèye states that this project was previously imposed on Senegal under the MCA, a move he opposed while in government, and was shelved after he alerted the then-Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko. He asserts that the current revival of the project is a deliberate choice by the government, influenced by lobbies, rather than an external constraint. Guèye argues that while creating subsidiaries may not technically be privatization on paper, in practice, it involves dividing a company into marketable lots that are eventually sold when the state needs funds, citing SONES and SDE as examples. He contends that SENELEC's issues stem from management, unpaid state debts, and reliance on imported fuel instead of national gas, not its legal structure. Guèye believes creating three subsidiaries, three boards of directors, and three general managements will increase costs and fragment command without reducing consumer bills. He calls for the government to address the real causes of SENELEC's problems, such as state debt
