The Chairman of the Association of forest users in The Gambia, Mr. Lamin Barrow, has called on the government of The Gambia and Senegal to dialogue with a view to resolve the continuous timber saga between the two neighbouring countries.
He made this statement recently in an interview with reporters in his office.
According to Chairman Barrow, “There are lots of timber issues going on between the two countries. In fact, it’s among the issues hindering the business between the countries. What we want is for the government to dialogue with their Senegalese counterpart to ensure that the saga is addressed for the benefit of both countries.”
Since the change of government in 2016, dozens of Gambian trucks loaded with timbers have been intercepted by Senegalese authorities especially those at the Bwiam Military Checkpoint, mounted by the Senegalese Forces. The Senegalese forces believe the timbers are been smuggled from Cassamance.
The country’s timber dealer chairman in an exclusive interview told reporters that, the timber business is not functioning as expected. As a result of the continue closure of the business by the two government.
He said: “Every time closing does not help The Gambia and even the Senegalese government as well as the timber associations of both countries.”
“We want the government to meet with its Senegalese counterpart including the timber dealers of both countries to discuss on issues affecting the business. In fact, it’s part of our plan to ensure that we have a joint tree planting exercise where the Senegalese timber dealers and The Gambia timber dealers will meet every year during the rainy season to do afforestation to replace the lost trees.”
On the bilateral agreement meetings, Chairman Barrow challenged the Gambian government to change its direction on that. He said the government should try whenever they are going on any business bilateral agreement to involve the Gambian businessmen in their delegation, so that the businessmen can have a clear feature of what is possible and what is not possible. He noted that Senegalese’s normally invite the businessmen whenever they are going on bilateral agreement, thus let the Gambia government consider the businessmen when going on such agreement, too.
Barrow said that Coronavirus have affected the whole World, saying as he is also involve in Cashew business, thus he said the Indian who used to buy cashew are not here due to the closure of shipping and airline, they were in their country paying the cashew prices in The Gambia, in their own prices which was very low. Barrow expressed hope that in this year2021 they will recover if Covid-19 drop.
He emphasised that Government should consider the businessmen, to see how they can reduce the taxes in this 2021, because cases are still increasing in other countries thus, in such we don’t expect investors to come in the country as they normally do.
He added that if the signal that they are seeing as alarming in the world did not change then is going to be very hard for businesses, because people from America or other places cannot come into the country to do business, while equally urged the Ministry of Finance to look in to the issue.