‘Bad Budget’ drives foreigners away
Non-Gambians seriously hard-pressed by the new tax scheme are leaving
the country. Budget 2003, which mirrors government’s intention to revise
upwards the existing rate for alien identity cards for Ecowas citizens
to D1000, and non- Ecowas aliens to D1, 500, has aroused the anxiety of
foreigners some of whom are so jittery over the situation that they said
they have packed bag and baggage, ready to leave. Already Guineans,
Senegalese and Nigerians have projected that by the end of the first
quarter of next year, they will have gone in droves. A random interview
of foreigners by The Independent indicated that, Budget 2003 has set an
inimical climate for foreigners running businesses in the country.
Twenty-five of those interviewed said they have already packed and will
leave in the coming days, since they felt there is no wisdom in staying
in an environment, that is ‘not business-friendly’ to foreigners. Last
Friday was a busy day at the Banjul International Airport, where
Guineans, Sierra Leoneans and Nigerians were seen boarding flights out
of the country. Although there were reports they that they were going
home for the Christmas and New Year vacations, a Fula businessman Modou
Alieu Sowe said foreigners are united in the belief that the very budget
has set out severe conditions for them to stay in the country.
He said he was closely monitoring the situation, and will leave if
conditions get as bad as they are being forced to envisage by the
budget. Nigerians, who were on their way out, are owners of video movie
halls, a thriving business enterprise, which has not escaped the new tax
regulations. Foreigners are doggedly opposed to what they call the
prohibitively high cost of residential permits, which has been raised
from D500 to D800 and the new income tax regulation of D5000. They
complained that if they were to stay under such tax regulations, the
little business they are running to survive would eventually collapse
and leave them severely stranded.
Other foreigners still deciding to stay, have said they may pack because
it was increasingly become clear that they could no longer afford to
cope with the situation. ‘We cannot afford to pay for residential
permits, alien permits, income tax, rentals and other domestic
commitments’, said Omar Wurri Sowe, a depressed Bakoteh businessman. The
budget was received with consternation by the Gambian population, who
bemoan the excessive taxation against the backdrop of depressingly low
incomes and purchasing power. It indicated the government’s intention to
trump up means of accumulating revenues through tax for which it has
come under fierce criticisms from all quarters of the society, who
described it as retrogressive and unproductive.
Gambians said the budget should have been based on progressive taxation
instead of measures that are evidently acts of extortion to
inconvenience the already sordid lives of the poor Gambian taxpayer.
Members of the public said apart from other sources of revenue in the
form of custom duties and sales tax, other harsh forms of taxation are
being devised to attract more revenues for the government at the
detrimental expense of poor Gambians, coupled with increased prices for
petroleum and essential and non-essential commodities. The budget speech
comes at a time of acute economic hardship and a dwindling value of the
local currency for which the regime is being blamed.
Independent view
Some startling facts
Yet again, we feel the need to point out the lack of transparency, which
casts a blemish on our fledgling democratic system. We are groping in
the dark because ‘some at the top’ do not feel comfortable with
transparency’s searchlight and have laboured to switch it off. We in the
press know how it feels to be kept in the dark and shut out from
information wounded up in so-called official secrecy. We know the fear
and anxiety in government circles, when we get too poky with our
stubborn inquiries.
We also understand the apprehension of some functionaries who for fear
of losing their jobs would stay reluctant to give out the vital
information. This feeling is understandable going by the usually
bad-tempered mood of the government towards journalists who distinguish
themselves from any other group of national inquirers. We do not love to
hate Yahya Jammeh or his government and all that they stood for. Ours is
not to hate people, important people at that, but to hate anti-social,
antidemocratic tendencies and bad policies and programme that undermine
our nation and eventually render our claim to statehood laughable.
It is in this context that we observe that transparency is now a taboo
subject for the government, which has erred so many times in matters of
transparency that we all take them for granted. As a matter of fact only
a leader whose mediocrity makes his government consistently prone to
mistakes - some deliberate, others accidental – would now shy away from
being transparent. The Independent is revisiting the issue of
transparency because of some annoying revelations that certain public
officials run big time businesses abroad, more pointedly the United
States where one of them owns a property in the Atlanta (Georgia)
province of Alpharetta, which he bought at $4 million.
Our investigations have also led us to details of another official
owning a house in Dakar, Senegal valued at 76 million CFA. There is
nothing wrong in owning these properties. No sin. Our beef is however,
how these properties were acquired and kept as matters of the utmost
secrecy for a long time. How can public officials buy properties using
millions of dollars ticked away from transparency’s searchlight? Some
may be asking whether it is our business to poke a finger in other
people’s pie. No, if the pie is acquired transparently and honestly.
But, yes if the whole process was shrouded in mystery and the
acquisition of the dole used to get it shady. The latter case appears to
hold sway here.
Although we are still conducting investigations in US, Dakar and other
countries where our officials have bought expensive ‘pies’, the details
we have now show that these properties were acquired illegally by
officials (names withheld until investigations are concluded) whose
earning power over many years could never have upgraded their purchasing
power into several millions. We also know that several brand new vans
plying the Banjul-Serrekunda highway belong to them but that is a small
kettle of fish compared to ‘the personal empires’ abroad.
Will someone answer to the properties in Morocco and elsewhere or we
will bring them out in due course? One cannot fail to be exasperated by
the fact that all this corruption and lack of transparency is taking
place against a sordid backdrop of acute mass suffering for deliberate
and accidental misapplication of policies. Once again, we do not hate
anybody in the government. What we are joining others in hating is the
things that saw to our current politico-economic crisis.
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