By: Momodou Justice Darboe
Despite the imposition of a hefty levy on imported bagged cement by the Gambia government ostensibly to protect local cement producers, a vessel carrying Salam Factory-imported bagged cement docked at the Banjul Port on Monday, this medium can authoritatively report.
The arrival of the vessel came at a time of grinding cement scarcity in several parts of the country.
At the time of writing this story, trucks have been transporting Salam’s imported bagged cement from the port to its factory at Mile Six along the Banjul Highway.
The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Trade, Mr. LaminDampha, on Tuesday told Coffee Time With Peter Gomez that The Gambia has adopted its trade policy because Senegal has “their way of dealing with goods coming from The Gambia to Senegal”.
“That’s why we also adopted our internal policy and now we are saying, we are not banning you from importing goods from Senegal but you have to pay the charges,” added PS Dampha.
It would be recalled that the Gambia government slammed a 500% levy increase on imported bagged cement a few months ago, contending that the increase of levy on a bag of cement from D80 to D130 was justified by the need to protect local cement manufacturers.
“The government should be hugely embarrassed by the fact that Salam is importing bagged cement when others have been prevented from doing the same. A 50kg bag or 200kg bag of cement are all bagged cement,” a concerned Gambian lamented in a chat with this reporter.