The World Bank country director for The Gambia, Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, and Mauritania has confirmed that the Gambia economy has shown strong growth performance in recent years and was sufficiently resilient during the global financial crisis of 2008. 

Vera Songwe was speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day government Resource Mobilisation and Investment Conference on the country's Accelerated Growth and Employment (PAGE). She said that the average annual GDP growth rate was about 6% between 2005-2010. “This is consistent with performance of the African continent post-crisis where, for first the time after a crisis, Africa was able to rebound quickly and today is the fastest growing continent,” she stated. 

She explained that the main reason for this good performance was strong macroeconomic performance and that The Gambia must be congratulated for this. She however noted that the 2011 drought has severely undermined agriculture sector growth and overall growth, while adding that growth is estimated to have dropped to 3% in 2011 and is expected to fall further in 2012.

She continued: “This will have an impact on poverty. Poverty in The Gambia has dropped significantly because of the good growth in the last few years. However, we know that poverty in the rural areas is over 60%, which remains high. Therefore, we must continue to focus on the importance of the quality and inclusiveness of growth for poverty reduction.” 

The WB regional representative hailed the PAGE and stated that the issues are well developed in it, while congratulating the government on the progress made. She said that the PAGE builds on the PRSP and incorporates lessons learned from its implementation. 

“As an investment framework, it has broken with tradition of previous national strategy frameworks for resource mobilisation, by putting more emphasis on private sector participation. It is not only bilateral and multilateral development partners that are targeted, but also greater private sector involvement,” she further stated. 

Songwe said that against this backdrop of shrinking donor resources, the private sector must be strongly encouraged to seize the opportunities provided on the PAGE through national and foreign direct investment and public-private partnership, while working to ensure maximum benefits for Gambians. “We encourage the government to continue improving the business environment and to maintain an active dialogue with the private sector,” she added.

Dilating on the WB and AfDB's commitment, Songwe intimated that under the umbrella of the second Joint Assistance Strategy (JAS) with the African Development Bank (AfDB) they would use the resource envelope of about US$55M (US$42.5 million from IDA-16, and an estimated US$13 million from the first year of IDA-17) to finance priority areas agreed with government. “Our financial resources will most likely surpass this figure as we continue to work to raise grants and other funding for the government,” she added.

She revealed that five areas in which the WB would focus on are notably the improvement on macro-economic performance, agriculture, human development and social protection agenda, private sector front and governance.