Senegal/ Decree N°2020-781 of March 18, 2020: A Derogating Decree

The Pandemic COVID-19 is a worldwide spread pandemic. And to fully limit its spread, country rulers have elaborated some action plans in reaction against it.

To facilitate the implementation of those action plans and taking into account the sanitary emergency, certain countries have modified some legal texts in some domains, especially in public procurement area. Among those countries, we can easily spot Senegal that brought some modifications to the Decree N° 2014-1212 of September 22, 2014 on the Public Procurement Code (that was modified by a previous Decree N° 2020-22 of January 7, 2020) which rules and procedures’ implementations do not allow the expenditures related to the fight against COVID-19 as it excludes from the scope of application of the Public Procurement Code, works, supplies and service deliveries in the frame of fighting against COVID-19.

The good news is that the new decree N°2020-781 of March 18, 2020 takes into account the pandemic in public procurement for the negative impact of COVID-19 is considerable. And with such a decree Senegal is ready to fight the pandemic in order to help actors in public procurement to safely move on with their activities despite the sanitary crisis.