The Gambia government has been strongly urged to increase productivity amid global price escalation caused by covid-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.
Mamadi Kurang, an accountant turned politician made the call as he proffered solutions to the nation’s economic problems. Meanwhile, his advice also comes as food and commodities prices have been skyrocketing in the markets on a day-to-day basis.
According to him, they should find ways to solve the problems of inflation and unemployment, describing inflation as too much money chasing too few goods.
“Solutions start with diagnosis because economics is a science. You use scientific techniques to diagnose the problem. People will tell: we cannot cultivate our rice fields because the rice fields are taken over by the wild grass and wild trees
“So discretionary expenditures have been one of our government’s main problems since 1965 to date. From Jawara’s government, they managed to do something, from Jammeh’s time, I spent something because this is what you are in power. This is not politics but if you are spending money you have to spend money on productive activity, you cannot just take cash and give it to people and say this is for voting. No, we need money to be spent in key sectors,” Mamadi Kurang explained.
The leader of the Youth for Change movement added that “They are destroyed, nobody can work on them. The people themselves by their own labour cannot bring those rice fields back for us to produce food to bring down the cost of food prices in the country.”
“So, the government needs to put our money where our mouth is in order for us to see tangible reduction in food prices in this country. Food prices is going to be a major global problem in few years to come for the simple thing that we have seen wheat problem because energy is a problem because all these things affect food prices because the Russia-Ukraine war There is a donor fatigue, so you have to see how you can increase productivity in my country,” he continued.
