The financial rating of cities and regions, a phenomenon that goes hand in hand with decentralization and regionalization, is gaining West Africa. In Côte d’Ivoire, the region of Sud-Comoé, led by its president, Minister Aka Aouélé, signed on Wednesday August 8, 2018, an agreement with the rating agency Bloomfield Investment Corporation.
The objective is to establish the credit quality of the region, to assess its ability to meet financial obligations, to absorb funds necessary for the development of the region and to repay its commitments when due.
According to the CEO of Bloomfield Investment Corporation, Stanislas Zézé, this signing of convention, the 3rd of its kind in Côte d’Ivoire for Local Government and the 4th in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) region, aims to The objective is to enable investors to have visibility in the short, medium and long term on the South Comoé region and to identify investment and loan opportunities.
Bloomfield’s goal is to encourage more and more local governments to raise funds in capital markets to enable them to make lucrative investments in their local communities and thereby allow them to a development that is not primarily based on state resources that are often not enough, “said Stanislas Zeze.
At a time when states are looking for other financing alternatives, the possibility given to local authorities to raise funds sounds like a real breath of fresh air. Provided that the state, as in the case of the aborted loan project of the city of Dakar, impregnated the necessary pedagogy and the stakes of such an approach.
