By Landing Colley
Minister of Finance and Economic Affair has disclosed that in term of revenue performance the country might lose one billion Dalasi of revenue collection for the year 2020 if the outbreak of coronavirus persists for the next three month.
Mambureh Njie made the remarks on Monday at the National Assembly during the first legislative session of the year on the implementation and monitoring of the annual budget.
He stated that the preliminary asses on the impact of coronavirus suggest that the economic growth in 2020 will be 3 per cent point slower than the initial estimate of 6.3 per cent at begin of the year.
“The economic impact of COVID-19 on the Gambia economic is estimated to result in a budget finance gap to 2.5 billion dalasi,” he added.
The Ministry of Health requested 6 million dalasi for preparation for COVID 19 but were offered with amount of 4 million dalasis citing that the money was given to Ministry of Health and was within the allocated reserve fund which is available for emergency expenditure, he said.
He further said the decline on the economic growth is estimated to start from trade remnant, construction and hotels within the country.
According to him the overall physical plane has close to a month national revenue collection which is likely to be lost and the budget deficient is expecting to widen from 1.5 percentage point of GDP as for the approve of the 2020 budget to 2.1% of the GDP with the impact of the COVID-19.
On the neck of domestic borrowing and the absent of the expenditure control the NDP will expand from 1.9 % of GDP to 2.5% of the GDP, he added.
“The globally supply remains constrain due to close down of factors in China, Europe and Middle East, international trade tax and domestic supply for base communities would also experience short term of such thus posting the risk of price high,” he said.
He ensured that suitable mechanism will be provide to reduce the impact to ensure that sound economic gains in the past two years are not equally lost due to COVID-19.