By Adama K. Jallow
The World Bank Group in The Gambia Monday, 6th June 2022 launched its second edition of the Gambia Economic Update with the theme “coming back soon” with series of significant panel discussions on the macro poverty overview and on human capital in the Gambia, the launching was held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba International Conference Centre, Bijilo.
In his welcoming remarks, World Bank Group Country Director Nathan M. Belete revealed that the report stresses that evidence based on data driven policy method would be key to raise a sustainable long term growth potential of the economy especially human capital accumulation and enhancing public service delivery.
He pointed out that The Gambia economic was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 like most of the world, but has since begun to recover in 2021.
Finance and Economic Affairs Minister, Seedy M. Keita extended his appreciations to the World Bank team for their unflinching supports, time and efforts dedicated to the production of the report on the Gambia economy. He added that the Gambia government is ready to implement refunds based on the findings of the report and counts on the continuous supports of the bank group and other development partners to achieve this.
According to the report, he said the Gambia got off relatively lightly from the Covid-19 pandemic and embarked on a quick path recovery despite the negative impacts on some of the key growth drivers, especially in the areas of tourism and trade.
He said the GDP growth was estimated to be 4.3 percent in 2021, a remarkable performance when compared to .6 percent registering 2020, as a result of the strongly bound in the services in the industry sector.
He noted that revenue performance also highlights the need to ramp up the domestic revenue mobilization efforts.
The Minister revealed that they have embarked on a series of reforms to improve the tax administrations and streamline tax expenditure, which includes the establishment of a tax policy unit within the directorate of the economic policy and research under which a comprehensive tax policy for the country would be developed. Other speakers at the ceremony included World Bank country’s’ economist, Mehwish Ashraf.