Jobe, take your time. Don't hurt yourself trying to keep up with me. Catch your breathe and come back anytime. Let us look at your 'justifications' today. I hope you realized that what you have back home is a failed agricultural policy. Gambians are hungrier now than they were six years ago. And the bottom-line is food in people's mouths. You claimed that rice production has increased. How come the price of a bag of rice has not decreased? Economics 101. Supply and Demand. If Gambians are producing more rice, it means that we need to import less rice, i.e. demand for imported rice decreases. Why is that decrease in demand not reflected in the price of a bag of rice? Ah!! We were busy making babies. If you figured out that problem, why did you not fix it? The problem is not population growth. Farmers that are producing the rice cannot even feed themselves let alone provide for the growing urban population. You see, there is a disconnect between your policies and claimed 'successes' and the plight of Gambians. You are simply not doing things that alleviate the poverty of the average Gambian. Whenever we make a false step forward, you take us two tangible steps backwards. Are Gambians not better off when they could purchase a bag of rice for less than 150 dalasis? I am glad that you pointed out that most of the success in our agricultural sector is attributable to natural causes. The rains have nothing to do with Yaya. What Yaya had a hand in, was and still is, a dismal failure. We thank God that He Blessed us with good rains the past few rainy seasons. What can we show for God's Great Grace? Rice harvests that cannot feed farmers all year round. Mountains of groundnuts Yaya could not help sell. Our farmers are in a precarious position. They had always produced rice. It is just that the rice they produce cannot feed them year round. Previously, they would sell their other products (like groundnuts) and buy rice for the rest of the year. Now they cannot do that. In the first place, they cannot sell their groundnuts at competitive prices. If they are lucky and the promissory notes of dubious groundnut buyers are honored, our farmers are still faced with the problem of sky-rocketing prices of commodities in the country. One of the first ill-advised and dubious deals of the AFPRC government when they took over was to confiscate the rice of businessmen like Charbel Elhajj and start selling their (AFPRC) own rice from Denton Bridge and other locations. This was nothing but a dirty ploy AFPRC learnt from their counterparts in Sierra Leone (Strasser et al). These bandits stole money from Social Security to finance this dubious project. When it is all said and done, all these monies will be accounted for. Did that policy have the effect of reducing the price of rice? Absolutely not. This government cannot do anything to reduce the price of rice. They are approaching the problem from the wrong angle. The commitment and the political will is not there. Yaya is more preoccupied about his bank accounts than about whether our farmers have food to eat. Jobe, have you pondered on the idea whether it is cheaper and more reliable to import than to produce rice in The Gambia? We have a vision-less moron leading us and I refuse to give them ideas to move the country forward. Just keep talking about irrigation and rains we cannot bank on. Moving to the groundnut sector, try touting APRC agriculture and economic policies to the farmers that cannot sell their nuts. Try telling us about the 'success' of your policies when we just learnt that government coughed up $12 million to compensate Alimenta for illegally booting them out of the country, thanks to thugs like Baba Jobe. Try talking to those farmers that still have Hilo promissory notes in their hands. What about groundnut farmers that cannot feed their children two square meals a day and take them to school and hospital because they have not seen a single 50 dalasis in the past two months? As Hamjatta and Saul try to point to you, the reality on the ground does not support your contention that Yaya is good for us. We are POORER under his watch than we were six years ago. Price of rice (we need to feed our families) has gone UP. Price of groundnuts (we need to sell in order to buy rice) has gone DOWN. The Dalasi is weak compared to the currencies we use in order to import our staple foods. In short, what God has given us in terms of good rains, the Devil (Yaya) has taken away from our farmers in terms of corruption and bad economic policies that will DEVALUE the money in our pocket (if we are lucky to sell our groundnuts or get a government job) and INCREASE the price of food. As far as fisheries is concerned, the industry has also suffered under Yaya's watch. It is a blatant lie to say that the industry "has never been given the attention it deserved until now." Do the names NPE, SeaGull, Boto Manjang, Tanje, Brufut, ColdStore, 'Ganaw Marche, both in Banjul and Bakau ring a bell to you? Why this selective amnesia when it suits you? Do you know how many millions of Dalasis the PPP government pumped into NPE via Commercial Bank? Do you know the incentives the PPP government gave Okran to bring fisheries from Ghana to Gambia? Do you know the number of trawlers we had pre-1994? Did you compare the number of people employed in these trawlers pre-1994 to the current figures? Go and ask real professionals in the industry about the dismal state of this industry. All you were talking about again were pending implementation of projects stolen from PPP. I hope you do not expect the PPP people or the current Opposition to get loans from Taiwan and implement these projects. Yaya stole power from them. If his government does not implement these projects, who do you want to implement them? Currently, we have less Gambians earning foreign exchange because they are fishing in trawlers belonging to Senegalese and Nigerians and Ghanaians. I will be interested to learn from you real figures about the foreign exchange outfits like NPE are earning as a result of their export activities. Maybe they can then repay their loan they got from the Gambian people. Can you also supply figures showing that Gambia saved a significant amount of foreign exchange because we no longer have to import a lot of protein products? This is laughable. You want to tell us that because of Yaya there are figures to show that we now consume less imported fish and meat? To begin with, we were not even spending a significant amount of foreign currency on imported protein-based food. We have always had a healthy supply of fish. We exported fish even during the Jawara regime. Remember? As far as the energy sector is concerned, the facts on the ground speak for themselves. It is already pitch-black. Putting wool over people's eyes will have no effect in blinding people. The moron has made several promises and failed. So long as he has his generator at the state house and there is electricity in Kanilai, he does not care about the rest of the country. You are darn right when you noticed that energy is very important in economic development. Ask the hotels how much money they spend buying fuel for their generators. Ask the Gambian families that lost their appliances and their houses because of your despicable power supply. Again, your government does not have the political will and the wherewithal to solve our energy problem. So long as we have thugs like Yaya, Baba Jobe, Tarik Musa, Amadou Samba lining up to fatten their bank accounts, our energy problem will not be solved. The importation of heavy equipment like electricity generators is Yaya's golden chance to receive bribes. I hope you understand that, because if you do, you will realize how difficult it would be for us to get our money's worth and get a final solution to this problem under Yaya's watch. Finally I want to also take issue with your assertion that our economy has been predominantly tax-based. As I understand it, what our governments collect from taxation is lot less than what we receive in terms of loans and grants. Just this year Famara Jatta revealed that a staggering 90% of the financing of his poverty alleviation program was coming from loans and grants; not from taxes. So I do not understand your claim. Granted, the government makes a lot of money taxing fuel and farmers, but the money received from taxation is less than the money we get from both internal (treasury bills) and external loans and grants. Please give us the figures on where the government gets the money to finance its projects; taxation, loans and grants. As far as the re-export trade is concerned, I would be interested to see your exhaustive analysis. You just mentioned it in passing. I hope you are not insinuating that it picked up during APRC. My reading is that since 1994 there are less vehicles plying between Gambia and Mauritania, Senegal, Bissau, Conakry, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Burkina, Ghana and even as far as Nigeria. Please enlighten us when you tackle this vital sector of our economy. Show us how Yaya improved this sector. 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