The economic and financial study makes it possible to draw up a diagnosis of the overall economic and financial situation of companies, particularly by branch of activity. For this edition, it is based on a series of DFS of 1185 representative companies (Appendix ii).
Macroeconomic environment in 2019
In the wake of global economic developments, the national economy slowed slightly in 2019. The growth rate was +3.7% after +4.1% in 2018. This deceleration has its internal origins in the persistence of the security crisis in the North-West and South-West regions, combined with the fire at the National Refining Company (SONARA) in 2019. On the supply side, production slowed down in the primary sector by +2.8% in 2019 after +5.1% in 2018, and in the tertiary sector by +3.0% in 2019 compared to +4.4% in 2018. While on the demand side, imports of goods accelerated, from +9.3% to +12.6%. The increase in production was accompanied by an acceleration in inflation to 2.5% in 2019 from 1.1% in 2018.
In this context, the pre-tax turnover of modern companies grew by only +0.8%, a significant deceleration compared to 2018 when this rate was +3.9%. This underperformance, attributable to the decline in trade activity (-2.1%); Financial intermediation activities (-7.9%) and ancillary products (-7.1%) were mitigated by the revival observed in services (+5.9%) as well as agricultural and industrial activity (+2.2%). The good performance of agricultural and industrial activity is mainly due to refining and hydrocarbon activities; agriculture; cement production, and the food and beverage industries. In the hydrocarbon refining activity, the revival of production has made it possible to reduce imports of these products by more than 200 billion CFA francs. However, this performance was hampered by the fire at SONARA in 2019, which despite the decline in its turnover remains the first in the ranking in this area.
