By Adama Makasuba
The Central Bank of Gambia has disclosed intention to see a price stability in the country that would help regulate uncontrolled prices on foodstuff and other goods, as the nation sees a sharp rise in prices of items such as basic food amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking at the quarterly Monetary Policy Committee in Banjul, the Governor of the Central Bank of Gambia, Buah Saidy, said: “we see price is going up, under normal circumstances as a Central Bank our main objective is to ensure that there is price stability. If we see inflationary pressures going up naturally among our zonal the first weapon we reach to is the interest rate.”
“We would have increased the interest rate to deal with the increase in prices, but reason why we still maintain the policy rate at 10% is that we want to be cautious because we are dealing with two issues: the increase in inflationary pressure and also the slowdown in growth because of the pandemic. We need to dig ourselves out of this problem. That’s why we didn’t increase the policy rate so that there will be room in terms of monetary accommodation to provide enough liquidity to the economy so that growth can take place,” he explained.
The CBG Governor dismissed claims that tax increase caused price increase as ‘unfounded’ saying “the tax increase has nothing to do with increase in prices. In The Gambia the major commodity which causes the increase in prices for instance – rice is zero tax so is not because of the tax increase that is resulting in to increase in price.”
“The tax increase has nothing to do with increase in prices and in The Gambia the major commodity which causes the increase in prices for instance rice is zero tax so is not because of the tax increase that is resulting in to increase in price,” he said.
According to him, part of the increase of commodity price is structural and that is been addressed and government is trying to improve the efficiency of the ports and with the expansion of the ports right now it can take one vessel – the jetty – at a time.
