Benin PM confirms running for president in 2016 polls

December 3, 2015 6:47 AM

Zinsou said he would focus his presidency on supporting the poorest and most vulnerable, bringing more workers into the formal sector and establish banking systems for agriculture in the tiny cotton producer.

Lionel Zinsou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PAI partners, speaks during the Reuters Global Mergers and Acquisitions Summit in London in a file photo. REUTERS/Benjamin Beavan

Benin's Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou said on Tuesday he would run for president on behalf of the ruling party in an election next year, burying fears that President Boni Yayi will defy constitutional term limits and seek a third term.

Moves by African leaders to extend their terms of office have triggered unrest in other African states like Burundi and Burkina Faso.

Boni Yayi's ruling party the Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin's (FCBE) lost seats in an April parliamentary poll, weakening his ability to push through constitutional reforms opposition figures had claimed were part of an attempt to seek another mandate next year.

Following the April defeat, Boni Yayi named the Franco-Beninese economist and former investment banker Zinsou as prime minister of a new government in June in a bid to boost the West African nation's growth which has been hit by a slowdown in neighbour and main trading partner Nigeria.

"When you have submitted your candidacy to your party, and when your party has been kind enough to decide that you are the preferred choice, you have to (run)," Zinsou said on the sidelines of an investment summit in London.

If he were to win February's election, one of his priorities would be to establish banking services for the agricultural sector, he said, adding that agriculture accounted for 23 percent of Benin's gross domestic product, but only for 2 percent on the banks' balance sheets.

"We do not finance agriculture in Africa – the families have to self-finance, and as a consequence we miss part of our potential," he said, adding many farmers were caught in a poverty trap having only access to high-interest loans.

"Then we cry and shout because we don’t create jobs in the formal areas, but we don’t finance it...so I think financing agriculture, building agricultural banks, building agricultural credit, preferably mutuals (is key)."

Another priority was to bring people from the informal sector into the formal sector, which would ensure some degree of training, protection and insurance for workers as well as tax receipts for the government.

Zinsou, who served as an adviser to Boni Yayi, was a managing partner at French bank Rothschild & Cie before leaving to join Paris-based private equity firm PAI Partners in 2008.