By Adama Makasuba
The Gambia groundnut cooperation has been asked to appear with Ministry of Finance and external audit for examining.
The request followed a Wednesday’s failure of the cooperation to produce appropriate activity and financial reports for 2017-2018 before National Assembly Public Enterprise Committee for scrutiny.
After few minutes to the start of session, the board members from Gambia groundnut cooperation sought to be giving days in order to present appropriate reports before the house committee for scrutiny and adoption.
The committee later called an internal meeting and unanimously agreed the Institution should appear with the Ministry of Finance and External Audit to address challenges facing the Cooperation.
“Management has also…challenges with the ministry of finance, so, in that regard it is conceive to be on the idea of the circumstances to ensure the appearance of the ministry of finance as well as external auditor in this exercise of examining what went wrong what could be done to remedy and what concrete promises could be giving that would not fail,” chair of the committee Halifa Sallah said.
He said the subject matter specialist agreed ‘GGC is an apex Institution that must be protected by virtue of the fact it is dealing with almost 70 percent of productive base of the economy.’
According to him, after internal discussion they agreed the best decision is to, adjourned to session to Thursday, adding ‘public enterprise are not only accountable to the executive and the ministries but also to the National Assembly and we are giving the responsibility of extending the reports by virtue of that power.’
But we are conscious of the fact that under section 3 of the Public Enterprise Act, the principal objective of every public enterprise shall operate as a successful business, Sallah said.
Board chair of Gambia Groundnut Cooperation Falalo M. Touray assured the committee of doing ‘their utmost best to ensuring they meet the aspiration of the country.’
He welcomed the decision of the committee to appear with the ministry of finance and external auditor as ‘timely’ adding ‘we are also concern that this issues are addressed one and for all.’
Meanwhile, the new board chair of Gambia Groundnut Cooperation has been in office for three months.