By: Arret Jatta
The CEO of the Gambia’s investment promotion agency Mr. Ousainou Senghore has told the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) of the National Assembly that the provision of land to investors is one of the main challenges that GIEPA has been facing.
The GIEPA boss made this utterance at the legislature on Monday during the consideration ofthe agency’s financial report.
“Where we face challenges is the unavailability of land. If you come to GIEPA and say you want to open a factory, we will not have land to show you. Definitely, land is our key challenge in terms of attracting investors,” he stressed.
Mr. Senghore pointed out that the process for theacquisition of land for investors “is long” as GIEPA has to coordinate efforts with the relevant ministry.
“What we can do is to write a correspondence to the ministry and this process might take six months to one year and what we realized is that the investor might be frustrated and move to somewhere,” he explained.
Mr. Senghore informed FPAC that GIEPA is now considering land banking.
“So, that is why we are looking at land banking because we realized that once you have land, you can provide it to the investor because investors everywhere expect land to be provided by the government,” he stated.