Folks,
This is President Jammeh's encouraging words for investors and
entrepreneurs.
“if a businessman wants to fight the government within one minute we can
make you disappear from the map of The Gambia”.
regards
Mboge
The Independent Published Friday, April 12, 2002
Gambian economy in a mess
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Omar Jallow the spokesperson for the Peoples’ Progressive Party has blamed
the APRC government for what he called the messy, retrogressive slide of the
Gambian economy. OJ who returned from Zimbabwe as a Commonwealth Election
Observer there recently said the situation of the economy offers no hope in
view of the “absence of any viable economic policy that is geared towards
encouraging the productive base of the economy to enable The Gambia generate
more foreign exchange, and meet the challenges of regional and international
economic scales”.
“We have seen in the past few months the rapid deterioration of the Dalasis,
which has serious effects on the purchasing power of individual Gambians,
because of high foreign exchanges rates” he observed. He said the groundnut
industry, which is the mainstay of the economy has been totally destroyed as
farmers are left at the mercy of mismanaged or misguided policies, which
culminated in abject poverty. “The fact that over D45 million is still owed
to farmers, by different buying agents, as announced by the SOS for
Agriculture implies that the economy is in a slump, and registering a
disastrous situation” he pointed out.
He said it was unimaginable for Gambian farmers to survive whose livelihoods
depend on agricultural produce for which they are not being fully paid. He
lamented that the Gateway Project, which was conceived by the PPP with over
100 companies registering their interest to invest in cotton and light
industries, faltered because of what he called the irreparable damage
brought to the country’s economy by the AFPRC coup. He suggested that cotton
industries should be encouraged to create employment for under-privileged to
alter the fact that the country has one of the highest unemployment rates.
He said he found it difficult to envisage change when “there is no serious
policy on the part of the government to remedy the situation”.
He said by now there should have been viable policies to create conducive
environments for international investments. He said since The Gambia was
supposed to be a private sector led economy, it was imperative that a
conducive environment should be created for investor confidence. He said
liberalization policies, foreign exchange control systems, non-interference
of the government in private sector activities could go a long way to
changing the “bleak picture presented by our economy”.
However, OJ charged that all this will not be possible going by a President
Jammeh interview with Entrepreneur magazine, in which he quoted the Gambian
leader as saying “if a businessman wants to fight the government within one
minute we can make you disappear from the map of The Gambia”. Such
statements from a head of state he said corrode the economic environment,
undermine investor confidence, and scare away potential investors. He said
most of the agricultural projects operated during the PPP days like the
Jahally Pachar Rice Development Project, the Small Scale Water Control
Project, the Cotton Project, the Livestock Development Project, and the Sapu
Agricultural Project are phasing down, if not abandoned by the current
regime.
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