Race to the Next Income Frontier: How Senegal and Other Low-Income Countries Can Reach the Finish Line

Through 18 chapters, this book draws on policy lessons from successful countries that have managed to overcome political economy constraints and reach upper-middle-income emerging market economy status to examine how Senegal can achieve per capita growth rates of four to five percent per year over a 20-year period, as well as lessons for other low-income countries. Contributors working in academia, civil society, and government in Senegal, as well as at the World Bank, in peer countries like Mauritius, Morocco, and Seychelles, and the International Monetary Fund, address creating a sound, balanced, and efficient fiscal framework through new revenue-raising measures, expenditure rationalization, and more efficient public investment; promoting an inclusive and deeper financial sector; relieving constraints on doing business and promoting private investment, including foreign direct investment; and achieving high, sustained, and inclusive growth. They discuss Senegal's macroeconomic environment and what it means to be an upper-middle-income emerging market economy, including the country's industrial framework, the Plan Senegal emergent growth targets, and dimensions of inclusive growth; revenue mobilization, public expenditure efficiency and rationalization, and debt sustainability; ways to make Senegal's financial system more stable, deeper, and more inclusive in the context of the West African Economic and Monetary Union; aspects of structural reform in the country and ways to implement reforms to achieve growth; and social inclusion and protection in Senegal.