By Adama Makasuba
Top official of the International Monetary Fund has announced IMF commitment to support The Gambia’s economics amid Russia-Ukraine war that has slightly crippled the world’s economics.
Ivonhasina Razafimahefa, IMF deputy division chief African Department was speaking Friday during a meeting with the Minister of Finance and Economics Affairs in Banjul.
“One of the issues in this war is increase in fuel and food prices as we have seen already. So, what we should have done is how to handle this shock [and] how to alleviate the transmission of the global food price to The Gambia.
“We are bringing some support to the government to help alleviate this shock given that the way we are going to address the [sic] to reduce some of the recurrence for the government to pay funds from the road projects,” he said.
“Then from that approach we will be helping address, there are few challenges to which is good to protect The Gambia. So, I will mention the main channels the dimension and economic activity in the sense that tourism sector which is a sector to being impacted by this war, huge again few challenges the income of the tourists come to The Gambia will be affected by the war that will increase and will reduce the possibilities of tourists coming to The Gambia,” he added.
“The other challenge is that Ukraine is one of the sources of chattered Planes that are used by flight agencies to transport tourists overseas to The Gambia and this will be disruption in terms of chattered Plaines. The other challenge as mentioned earlier, the challenge of global food and fuel prices which will also and is already impacting the Gambian economy and inflation here in The Gambia,” he disclosed.