The 28th General Assembly of State Corporations (AGSE) opened on Thursday, June 25, 2020 in Ouagadougou, under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Christophe Joseph Marie Dabiré. For two days, on June 25 and 26, 2020, participants will review the operation of the 21 Crown corporations for the 2019 fiscal year and then formulate perspectives for the 2020 management. In 2019, three state-owned companies were loss-making.

Dix-nine state-owned companies and two public social security institutions, take part in this 28th General Meeting of State-Owned Companies (AGSE), whose objective is to take stock of the activities of all state-owned companies for the year 2019. On the agenda of these two days of exchanges, the presentation of the performance reports and the report of the framework for consultation of state-owned companies. State-owned enterprises will have to present to the General Assembly their financial statements, management strategies and the reports of the boards of directors and auditors. According to Prime Minister Christophe Dabiré, this General Assembly, which has matured, is an instrument for anchoring good governance within public companies.

Prime Minister Christophe Dabiré at the 28th AGSE

An overall positive management balance sheet

According to the summary report of the secretariat of the 28th session of AGSE, presented by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Handicrafts, Aboubacar Traoré, it is in a general context of declining growth that companies public performances were generally satisfactory. Indeed, the overall turnover of all companies increased by 8.73% compared to 2018. This allowed state-owned companies to contribute 335.590 billion CFA francs to the national budget in 2019, an increase of 3.493 billion compared to the previous year.

Aboubacar Traoré, SG of the Ministry of Trade and Industry

Dix-eight public companies achieved, in 2019, a cumulative net profit of 192.345 billion CFA francs against 174.975 billion in 2018. Unfortunately, the other three companies were loss-making. These are the Minoterie du Faso (MINOFA), the Société Burkinabè de Télédiffusion (SBT) and the Société nationale d'aménagement des terres et de l'équipement rural (SONATER). The cumulative deficit of these companies in difficulty amounts to 704 million CFA francs in 2019. The overall net profit for the 21 companies in 2019 is 191.641 billion, compared to 172.664 billion in 2018, an improvement of 10.99%.

" The results achieved by public companies over the past year lead me to address you, on behalf of His Excellency the President of Faso, Chairman of the General Assembly of The Companies of Faso 'State, my well-deserved congratulations in your capacity as representatives of all the members of the administrative and management bodies. I encourage their management and supervisory structures to invest more in the continuous improvement of their performance in order to contribute significantly to the national economy," said the head of the Burkinabe government, Christophe Dabiré.

The participants in the 28th AGSE

Desults that hide the difficulties encountered

For the Prime Minister, the overall results hide difficulties at the level of some public companies. Indeed, in 2019, the turnover of companies such as SONATER, Poste Burkina Faso, CEGECI and SEPB decreased by 2.717 billion, 1.921 billion, 193 million and 115 million CFA francs respectively. As in 2018, investment by state-owned enterprises remained weak : only 46.39% of investment forecasts were made in 2019.
As for the personnel costs of public companies, they increased by 5.569 billion CFA francs in 2019.

The Minister in charge of Trade, Harouna Kaboré, welcomes the reduction in the number of loss-making companies

Those of SONABEL, ONEA and La Poste Burkina Faso increased by 2.326 billion, 1.769 billion and 531 million CFA francs respectively. The gross operating surplus, which measures the economic performance of these state-owned enterprises, deteriorated by 9.693 billion CFA francs, from 151.794 billion CFA francs in 2018 to 142.101 billion in 2019.

Christophe Dabiré urged the management and supervisory structures to redouble their efforts to improve the results of future years. " The viability and prosperity of companies can only truly be sustainable if they have a real internal capacity to make new investments. In this regard, I invite you to take measures to reduce to reasonable proportions, the rate of increase in operating expenses, in this case those of staff, which reached 8% between 2018 and 2019 , "urged the head of government.

Participatings

At this General Assembly, the National Universal Health Insurance Fund (CNAMU) participated for the first time as an observer member. It will submit to the attention of this Assembly, a detailed report describing the level of operationalization and the prospects for its operation.