Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar

Having served twice as Prime Minister, from April 1992 to January 1996, and from August 2005 to March 2007, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar is a leading player in the political and economic changes which have taken place in Mauritania over the last twenty years. He is currently his country's Ambassador to Spain.

Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar was born on 31 May 1957 in Atar ( Mauritania). He studied at the Lycée National de Nouakchott and passed his baccalaureate in 1976. He then continued his studies at the University of Orléans (France), where he received a DEA in Economic Law in 1982. He then went on to study at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration de Nouakchott, majoring in Financial Authority Management, and he joined the Mauritanian civil service in 1983, working as a high official within the Economy and Finance Ministry:

November 1983 : Technical advisor to the Minister of Finance and Trade March 1984 : Treasury and Public Accounts Director February 1985 : Director of the Supervision of Publicly Owned Establishments January 1986 : Budget and Debt Director March 1987 : Controller General of Finances December 1987 : Director of the Plan April 1988 : Treasury and Public Accounts Director.

In October 1990 he was appointed Minister of Finance. To reduce the budget deficit he implemented reforms aimed at rationalising government expenses and modernising tax and customs codes. However, the slowdown caused by the Gulf war, and affecting Mauritania's traditional partners, aggravated the country's economic difficulties. At the same time Mauritania, like many countries in the region, underwent a process of democratisation after the La Baule speech given by President François Mitterrand to the Conference of Heads of State of France and Africa in June 1990. Following the Presidential elections, a Mauritanian opposition party contested its results and decided to boycott the legislative elections.

On 18 April 1992, the President Elect Ould Taya named Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar as Prime Minister, and he set out to make the economy the government's priority.

He negotiated a three-year reform program with the International Monetary Fund, supported by the Enhanced Structural Adjustement Facility (ESAF) aimed at improving the balance of payments and the outlook for growth. Drastic measures including severe devaluation of the Mauritanian currency, the Ouguiya, were implemented. The first results made themselves felt from the very first year and the economic situation gradually improved against a backdrop of the resumption of financing from external sources. In Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar represented Mauritania at the United Nations Conference on the Environment, where he was Vice Chair. In June 1993 he presided over the Mauritanian delegation to the International Human Rights Convention in Vienna, and the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in March 1995.

In January 1996 he quit the government and was elected Secretary General of the ruling party, the PRDS. He then held the positions of Minister and Secretary General to the Presidency of the Republic before becoming the Director of the Presidential Cabinet in October 2001. In this capacity, he presided over the government’s delegation to the Fourth Consultative Group for Mauritania, held in Paris in December 2001.

From 2002 onwards, the domestic political situation deteriorated. Opposition movements became radicalised and Mauritania underwent a period of instability marked by an attempted coup in June 2003, and a deadly terrorist attack perpetrated by the GSPC (The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) in the north of the country. The government arrested numerous opponents and Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar was dismissed.

A few months later, in April 2004, he was recalled to become the Mauritanian Ambassador to Paris. In the capital, Nouakchott, political trials followed on from the arrests against a backdrop of increasing insecurity. On 3 August 2005, the government in Mauritania was overthrown by a coup led by Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Val. The new government decreed a general amnesty and made a commitment to rescue the economy, organise free and transparent elections within no more than 19 months, and to transfer power to a democratically elected government. They called upon Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar to head the transition government.

National consultation conventions in which all of the country's political forces participated were organised in October 2005. They approved the transitional government's program and defined an electoral calendar envisaging a constitutional referendum and legislative and presidential elections.

The new Prime Minister set himself to restoring confidence in the relationship with the IMF, which had deteriorated significantly in the preceding period. He set up a Staff Monitored Program (SMP), and the satisfactory compliance with this enabled Mauritania in 2006, to benefit, within the framework of the Initiative in favour of Poor and over Indebted Countries, from a debt write-off worth 819 million dollars to its multilateral creditors (IMF, World Bank, African Development Bank). Achievement of this program opened the door, in December of the same year, to the signing with the IMF of a Three-Year Arrangement under the Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF) which culminated in the normalisation of the country's relations with the international financial community. In terms of good governance, in September 2005 Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar tried to get Mauritania, an iron and oil producing country, signed up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). He created the Government Inspectorate, a body invested with broad powers and specialising in the fight against economic and financial transgressions. In January 2006 his government cancelled the oil production agreements with the Australian company Woodside, claiming that the said agreements were illegitimate and damaging to Mauritania’s interests. Following intensive negotiations, he succeeded in renegotiating contracts for the sharing of oil production. The revised contracts provided, in particular, for 100 million dollars' compensation for the Mauritanian state, as well as new environmental measures to protect against the major risks arising from oil production. Within the context of implementing the government’s political commitments, in September 2005 he set up the Inter-Ministerial Electoral Committee. To guarantee the administration’s total neutrality during elections, none of the serving officials, including the Prime Minister himself, stood for election. An independent electoral commission had been set up for the first time in Mauritania, with numerous observers including the UN and the EU being invited to follow the progress of elections. The various electoral milestones that all political parties took part in passed under good conditions, and on 25 March 2007 a new President of the Republic, Mr. Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, was elected with 52.85% of the vote, whose lawfulness was hailed by all observers. The Mauritanian experience is cited, in Africa and the Arab world, as an

example of a successful democratic transfer. On 31 March 2007, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar tendered his government’s resignation. In October 2007, Mr. Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar was appointed as the Mauritanian Ambassador to Madrid.

  ref>[1] after which Abdallahi appointed Zeine Ould Zeidane as prime minister on April 20.[2]

References

Prime Ministers of Mauritania Colonial Daddah Independent Daddah office abolished, 1961 – 1979 Bouceif† Sidi* Haidalla† Bneijara Taya† Haidalla† Taya† Boubacar Khouna Guig Khouna M'Bareck Boubacar Zeidane Waghef Laghdaf Hamedine *acting † military