Analysis
Burkina Faso’s gold boom has given the state more money, but not a smaller deficit: it has given it more to spend. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on 4 November that the 2026 supplementary budget “incorporates strong first-half revenues and a corresponding spending increase, particularly for public investment”, while keeping the government’s deficit target at 2.7% of GDP. IMF staff say the deficit could exceed that target, though it should stay below 4%.
Gold appears in two different places in the accounts. Surging exports pushed the current account, the balance of the country’s external transactions in goods, services, income and transfers, into a surplus of almost 10% of GDP in 2025, which the IMF expects to ease to 6.8% this year; an external surplus is not cash in the Treasury. In the fiscal accounts, the government has made room for additional revenue: Finance Minister Aboubakar Nacanabo told Parliament on 23 September that 301 billion CFA francs of additional revenue had been opened. The IMF credits “buoyant revenues from the mining sector” with creating “space for priority spending”, but these two documents do not identify gold’s share of the 301 billion.
Mr Nacanabo told MPs the margin would fund “structuring” investment: road and building infrastructure, equipment and vehicles for the state’s fleet, projects under the government’s Plan Relance recovery programme, and a second phase of the Smart project for urban surveillance, traffic management and fining of offences. Those are budget allocations, not money paid. MPs asked how investments would be executed and financed, and the budget committee asked the government to evaluate the cost of the new tax exemptions.
The competing pressure is on the spending side. The IMF says higher petroleum prices linked to the Middle East conflict “drain public finances”, and that El Niño weighs on the food-security outlook; its talks with the government focused on provisions to manage energy costs, strengthen social protection and ensure food security. The release gives no figures for what those cost, so how much of the extra revenue they absorb is not known. The evidence supports higher allocations, not a measured finding on household protection. Fiscal room and affordable essentials are different outcomes: the IMF projects inflation at about the midpoint of the regional central bank’s 1–3% target range this year, rising next year but staying within it.
IMF staff and the authorities have agreed on the sixth review of the Extended Credit Facility and the second review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. The IMF’s Executive Board must still approve them, with consideration tentatively scheduled for mid-January 2027; approval would release further payments of about 64.6 million IMF special drawing rights under programmes that have already made earlier disbursements.
The record so far shows where the government chose to put the extra room: capital projects, including security technology, while the IMF talks also address energy costs and food security.