- The World Bank has approved a $30 million grant to help The Gambia to improve financial viability and service delivery in the energy and telecom sectors.
- The grant will be leveraged to improve debt and public investment management as well as enhance the transparency and governance framework of State-Owned Enterprises.
The Gambia will ensure public investment projects are appraised as per National Development Plan priorities. The aim is to support the adoption of a new procurement bill to eliminate the use of single-source procurement as well as to tighten the emergency clause for its use.
The energy sector will take advantage of the grant to provide cheaper, more reliable and cleaner energy to customers.
Elene Imnadze, resident representative of the World Bank, said: “This first in a series of two programmatic Development Policy Operations supports The Gambia’s efforts to undertake fundamental reforms to improve fiscal management for better public service delivery.”
Mehwish Ashraf, World Bank Country Economist and co-Task Team Leader, added: “This operation will support the government in strengthening fiscal transparency and reducing fiscal risks and promote a governance framework to ensure long-term sustainability of the SOE sector.”
The projects to be funded will help The Gambia to achieve some of its goals set under the National Development Plan for 2018-2021 – economic stabilisation, growth stimulation and structural transformation
Author: Nicholas Nhede
This article was originally published on ESI Africa and is republished with permission with minor editorial changes.
