L'impact des infrastructures publiques sur la compétitivité et la croissance. Une analyse en EGC appliquée au Sénégal

This paper analyses the impact of public infrastructure on the competitiveness and growth of the Senegalese economy within the framework of a computable general equilibrium model. Latreille and Varoudakis (1996) demonstrated, in partial equilibrium, that the absence of competitiveness within Senegal’s economic sectors is attributable to a weakness in the gains of productivity, which itself is due to the decrease in the rate of public investment. This paper examines the extent to which an increase in public infrastructure will improve the commercial performance, as well as the growth of the Senegalese economy. First, in a static general equilibrium framework, we expose the theoretical mechanisms put into play when there is an increase in total productivity of factors of production, assuming that the variation in the TFP comes from an increase in public spending. This allows interactions between the variations in public spending and the real exchange rate to be captured. The second section presents a computable general equilibrium model applied to Senegal and the results of the simulations. We show how the effects on commercial performance of manufacturing sectors of a policy of expansion of public infrastructure can differ according to its effect on the level of domestic prices and the wage rate. Furthermore, the choice of the method of financing of an extensive budgetary policy is important because it is through this bias that the effects on the level of domestic prices can be controlled. Owing to this, an approach in terms of a computable general equilibrium, based on relevant sectorial estimations is preferable to more classical studies in partial equilibrium.