Four months after his arrival at the head of the Guinean government, Prime Minister Mohamed Béavogui painted a gloomy picture of the state of his country. In an interview granted to public television on January 26, 2022, he accuses the former government of Alpha Condé of not having transferred to the public treasury revenues from bauxite, the country’s main export product.
Presented as a competent and honest man, the economist Mohamed Béavogui was appointed in October 2021 at the head of the government by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, Guinea’s new strongman after having driven out, by a coup d’etat, the former President Alpha Conde.
In an interview with the Journal “The world”the Guinean Prime Minister explains why “the state coffers are empty”. “We ended 2021 with a stock of payment arrears, unpaid bills, of 4,700 billion Guinean francs, around 470 million euros, almost a quarter of the national budget. This means that the resources intended for the functioning of the state and the country in general have gone elsewhere.Yet, according to the International Monetary Fund, Guinea’s bauxite production amounted to nearly 4 billion dollars in 2020. The fiscal resources that were to go to the Treasury passed through pipes pierced on all sides.”
In his audit of public finances, Mohamed Béavogui observes “that between September 5, 2021 (date of the coup) and the end of October 2021, the wage bill of the Guinean State increased sharply”.
“The number of civil servants increased by 4,500 agents in one month when officially we hadn’t recruited anyone”…”I asked for an audit to realize that we had two files: the file of the payroll and the payroll file. The two files didn’t match. So we didn’t know who we were paying.”
Guinean Prime Minister Mohamed BéavoguiNewspaper “The World”
“What we are asking for is an administration that thinks of something other than getting rich. In Guinea, the richest men are civil servants. We need public finances that are properly managed. Finally, this country benefits from its resources.” he says in Le Monde interviewed by journalist Christophe Châtelot.
Mohammed Beavogui also defends what he calls Mamady Doumbouya’s “counter-coup” and asks for help and time to rebuild Guinean institutions before being able to go to elections in good conditions.
“Our goal is to create a model of society with democratic institutions based on equity, justice, transparency, with irreversible mechanisms.” “Our roadmap is based on three pillars. The most important is political, but it is not enough without a good judicial system, without a good administration, without a good management of public resources and without a minimum of infrastructure for us allow us to move towards good elections.”
Colonel Doumbouya has promised to return power to civilians after elections, but no date has been set.