By Binta Jaiteh
The Gambia Ferry Service has spent D15 million dalasis in rehabilitation of ferries and technical capacities for the past five years.
Lamin Jawara, Managing Director of Gambia Ferry Services said: “the company invested 15million to rehabilitate and update the technical capacities of the ferries for the past five years.”
According to him, sequel to the increase in the revenue news the company limited invested over 15 million in the rehabilitation and updating of the technical capacities of the ferry over past five years to ensure that ferries are not only safe and reliable but are able to reach the demand of the ferry services across the country.
“This has significantly impacted in the turn out times of the ferries which in turn resulted in an increase of revenue for Banjul, Barra and Trans-Gambia. In 2019 financial performance total operating revenue has decreased from D380million in 2018 to D340 million in 2019 which represents a decrease of D40M (10%) during the period under review,” he said.
“Furthermore, the gross profit decreased from D275m in 2018 and D204m in 2019 and the profit loss after tax decreased from a profit of D63M in 2018 to a loss of D47M in 2019 due to mainly reduction activity at the Trans-Gambia crossing point because of the partial opening or the bridge in January 2019.
“The next book values or the assets decreased from D998M in 2018 to D945M in 2019 representing a decrease or D52M (5%) due mainly to depreciation charges for the year total number of passengers ferried across the country was 4, 071,151,3,525,027 crossed through Banjul /Barra , 383,272 ,was ferried across TransGambia and the remaining 162,852 were ferried across the provincial stations adding that compared to the total number of tariff figures of total passengers traffic 5,043,992 across the country,” he added.
However, total capital and reserved increased from a deficit of D356M in 2018 to D427M in 2019 as at the end of the period. Tariff Increment Implemented in April 2018, since the transfer of the compendium from GPTC the company has never had the right tariff structure. Which would have guaranteed the full recovery of its operating cost. After the tariff increment across all the major crossing points the revenue earnings of the company increased by about 25% which had greatly compensated for some of the increases in material cost inputs over the years,” he disclosed.