According to Sénénews, a decree has been signed jointly by the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Aliou Sall, and the Minister of Finance and Budget, Cheikh Diba, setting out the terms and amounts of the annual fee applicable to players in the audiovisual communication value chain.
According to this decree, all foreign holders of licenses for the publishing, distribution, and broadcasting of audiovisual services such as Canal+, TNT, RFI, Radio China International, etc. will have to pay an annual fee that is much higher than the one paid until now.
For Canal+ Senegal, the license fee would increase from around 75 million CFA francs today to nearly 4.5 billion CFA francs (just under 7 million euros).
RFI, for its part, is expected to pay 675 million CFA francs per year for its nine frequencies (1 million euros, compared to only 10 million CFA francs previously).
Radio China International: Would cost 150 million CFA francs for one or two frequencies.
This new measure, hailed by many as an act of fiscal justice, has triggered a chain reaction: faced with this increase, Canal+ has decided to pass on the new cost to its subscribers with an increase in the price of its packages of around 10%.
In response, associations such as SOS Consommateurs denounced the lack of consultation and launched class action lawsuits against Canal+, calling for legal action and the mobilization of subscribers.
Despite the announcement that the measure will come into force, there are still many grey areas, such as the effective date of application, the scale according to which the fees will be calculated (turnover, number of frequencies, advertising revenue), not to mention the impact this will have on households' access to audiovisual services and even on the sustainability of certain media outlets.