The controversy over fuel prices has had at least one virtue: it brought Mauritania’s economic policy out of silence. It forced choices to be expressed, figures to circulate, and positions to confront each other.
I joined that debate in an earlier piece. I return to it today not to reopen the same file, but to look further: at the fundamentals of the economy, at the promises of gas, and at a social safety net whose most recent numbers reveal a reality broader than initially thought.
I write only as an attentive citizen, with no legitimacy other than that of verified facts.
Policy coherence: a nuance on the order of decisions
My first contribution acknowledged the legitimacy of the chosen instrument—price adjustment accompanied by targeted transfers—while noting that the central bank also points to excess bank liquidity as a source of inflation. This point deserves deeper analysis.
Economist Sidi Mohamed Biya offered a nuance worth quoting because it is correct. Faced with an energy shock, the coherent response is precisely the one followed: a division of roles between monetary policy, acting on demand and inflation expectations, and targeted transfers protecting real income without fueling aggregate demand. A transfer to vulnerable households does not create inflationary pressure in the same way as general fiscal expansion. That is its raison d’être.
The sequencing, often omitted in this debate, confirms this. The government’s social decisions date from March 31, 2026. The key interest rate hike came on May 18, 2026. The central bank acted after the government’s arbitration, not before. This is not “loosen, then tighten”; it is the reverse. The criticism of sequential incoherence loses some of its foundation.
However, a real blind spot remains. Mauritania’s inflation is not only imported via fuel. It is also fueled, the central bank itself says, by excess liquidity in the banking system. This second, domestic driver is distinct from the fuel debate. It is on bank liquidity and the composition of public spending that criticism of economic policy finds its strongest basis.
Macroeconomic foundation: figures that contradict the fragility narrative
Before any conclusion about Mauritania’s economic fragility, some objective benchmarks are needed.
Public debt stands at about 42% of GDP, considered sustainable by the IMF with a moderate risk of over-indebtedness. Public revenues approach 22.5% of GDP, rising thanks to new fiscal measures. Foreign exchange reserves cover about 6.4 months of imports—a comfortable level. Growth reached 4.0% in 2025, with a rebound expected in 2026 driven by the start of gas production. The IMF praises prudent fiscal management anchored in a rule that protects spending from commodity price swings.
This picture does not describe an economy in collapse. It describes an economy under tension, with structural projects still unfinished.
Gas: a promise that nothing guarantees automatically
At the end of 2024, the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim project delivered its first gas. Initial LNG cargoes followed in 2025, and production is gradually ramping up to its nominal capacity. Mauritania is now a gas producer. That is not nothing.
But a rent is not a transformation. It can finance one, provided institutions apply themselves seriously. Roads, accessible energy, schools, justice, a productive private sector—this is what the rent can buy if well directed. A recent signal points in that direction. In March 2026, the central bank announced a partnership with the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), mobilizing about $900 million in Islamic financing for Mauritanian businesses. That is a useful step. But local content is not decreed; it is built through training, regulated subcontracting, and time.
True sovereignty: stocks, rules, competition
Mauritania imports nearly all its refined fuels: about 800,000 tonnes of diesel and 125,000 tonnes of gasoline per year. Its storage capacity remains limited, and its distribution logistics are concentrated among a few operators. This dependence carries a cost in foreign currency and a real vulnerability to every global shock.
The sovereignty worth discussing is not an abstract notion. It is concrete resilience: sufficient stocks, transparent competition rules, the ability to monitor margins and arbitrate between operators. Gas, by gradually reducing the energy bill for electricity, will eventually ease pressure on foreign exchange reserves. But the effect on transport fuels will be neither immediate nor direct.
Social: new numbers change the picture
It is here that the most recent information forces a revision of the initial framing of this debate.
During a meeting with representatives of the most representative trade unions on June 11, 2026, the President of the Republic made public the figures of the ongoing social effort. On the single item of energy price support, the state had already mobilized the equivalent of 4.06 billion MRU. This amount is expected to reach 13 billion MRU by year-end. In parallel, food aid is being paid to an additional 155,000 families, and cash transfers reach 352,000 households across the country—nearly three times the initial 124,000 announced. More than 42,500 civil and military public servants, as well as 27,600 retirees, receive exceptional support. The total envelope for social interventions is expected to exceed 14.8 billion MRU over the current year.
These figures illuminate three points in the debate.
First, the real coverage of the system. The criticism about the low number of beneficiaries deserves revision: 352,000 households is a significant effort, comparable to the coverage of the Tekavoul program at full capacity. The national social register demonstrated its usefulness here.
Second, the question of cost. Energy price support (13 billion MRU expected in 2026) far exceeds the estimate of pure capping presented in the first contribution (about 5 billion MRU for diesel alone). But the two figures are not directly comparable: “energy price support” covers a broader scope than just the petroleum tax on transport fuels and likely includes electricity and other forms of energy. A more precise breakdown of this envelope is needed to settle the matter.
Third, the nature of the approach adopted. The state opted for a combination: partial price adjustment, sectoral energy support, multiple targeted transfers. This hybridization has a total cost that probably exceeds that of a pure option applied rigorously. That is the price of a choice that protects—even imperfectly—without brutally exposing households to the full shock.
Benefits paid via Tekavoul and the national social register remain modest relative to real needs. The real challenge, which these figures make visible, is to make these transfers regular rather than ad hoc, and to gradually increase their amount.
Economist Yahya Ould Amar recently recalled that the poor must never be the adjustment variable in economic choices. This requirement does not oppose targeted transfers. It mandates them. Universal subsidies, apparently social, sacrifice the poorest twice: first by spending on the better-off (those who consume the most fuel), and then by creating a deficit that the same vulnerable households will absorb during the next tightening.
The projects that will decide the future
The macroeconomic foundation is solid. The gas rent is underway. The social safety net is real, and broader than previously thought. What is still missing is transformation: building an economy capable of creating value beyond the rent and public spending.
This requires investment in human capital, because no natural wealth replaces a school that educates. It requires correcting regional imbalances so that growth is visible across the entire country, not just in Nouakchott. And it requires institutions that function consistently, beyond political and economic cycles.
Conclusion
The first mission of an economy is to manage its balances. The second, more difficult, is to make prosperity sustainable and shared. These two missions do not oppose each other. But they do not advance at the same pace.
The debate on fuel prices had a virtue. It reminded us that protecting the most vulnerable and maintaining public accounts are not contradictory objectives. They require the same instruments: rigor in targeting, regularity in payment, transparency in spending. This is not a question of generosity. It is a question of method.
An economy that knows how to count must also know how to build—and know whom it protects.
