By Adama Makasuba
A delegation of Malian National Petroleum Office (ONAP) led by officials of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Wednesday toured the headquarters of Gampetroleum and Castle in Mandinary, as the two countries entered into bilateral deal on energy and cross-border trading.
Mali which has no seaport depends on countries like The Gambia for exporting fuel.
Lamin Gaye, Gampetroleum welcomed the delegation and described The Gambia-Mali relationship as based on crucial principles.
“Because Mali constitutes one of our markets for petroleum products,” he said, adding that he believes the relationship will create more opportunities not only for the two nations but that it will do for its entities.
“The discussion was centred on strengthening relationship and deepen our economics and revenue base, and also ways of addressing some of the cross-border challenges that existed between The Gambia, Mali, and Senegal,” Mr Gaye said.
Modou Lamin Sampo Ceesay, director general of energy and water at PURA who also spoke at the site described the energy sector as growing and that “more people are investing in it.
“We will also try to make sure licensing framework to allow competition in all the sectors we regulate,” he said.
Meanwhile, he added: “we may not have the exact figures but any export is beneficiary because “we know for a fact that there is an increase from the data we saw from our Malian [counterparts] within 2019/2020 there is 100% increase from the imports from The Gambia.”
Issa Kondo, head of Malian delegation expressed their visit to the country as satisfactory to “what we have seen” describing his Malian operators as very good actors in the energy market and that the visit will help in their official jobs.
“We don’t want to be into competition with anyone we want to make stability in this market. We want to make this product to be available to everyone if you want to try it you are welcome, I can rent you space I don’t have a problem on that,” Castle managing director has told reporters Hassib Massry in Mandinary.
According to him, his company seeks to make reasonable and acceptable prices on fuel cost in the country so that fuel distribution reaches every place of the nation.
“And the more activities you have at Gampetroleum, the more profitable GAMpetroleum is and the more employment it will create [and] the more fuel that comes to The Gambia,” he said.