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Gambian Minister Calls for Urgent Actions to Avert Global Recession
Sunday, 25 September 2011 23:48
(JollofNews) - The Gambian Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs have called on political institutions in advance
economies to rise to the current economic challenges and take urgent actions to address weaknesses in public, bank, and household balance sheets in order to restore confidence and prevent a global recession.Mambury Njie said the global economy is at a significant risk and economic management of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has been made more difficult by the crisis emanating from the advanced economies.
Speaking at a press conference by African ministers during the 2011 annual meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund on September 24 in Washington DC, Mr Njie said strong performance in the emerging and developing economies is offset by higher-than-expected weaknesses in the advanced countries and debt concerns in the United States and Europe.
He added that recent developments in the global economy pose downside risks to Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly heightened pressures on the balance of payments, reduce export demands, and decline in government revenue, with serious implications for ongoing investments in agriculture, investments in employment and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
Minister Njie noted that African economic performance during the pre-crisis decade was strong due to actions taken by Africans to adopt good economic policies, build macroeconomic policy buffers, implement far-reaching structural reforms, improve economic governance, and end political conflicts. These pre-crisis buffers according to Minister Njie, have enabled the continent to withstand the effects of the 2008-2009 crisis.
“The risks are even greater this time around, as we have already used a large part of our macroeconomic policy buffers, i.e., fiscal space, external reserves, to mitigate the impact of the crisis. Given this limited policy space, the international community must [unclear] to provide additional concessional refinancing and policy advice to the innocent bystanders impacted by the crisis,” he said.
Minister Njie stated that the Gambia government is continuing to do all it can to protect Gambians from the impact of the global economic crisis. He revealed that the country’s economic growth is at 5.5 per cent while inflation is relatively low at 4 per cent.
He added that: “External reserves stand at 5.1 months of imports, and we have made strong progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals. We plan to further progress by implementing our program on accelerated growth and employment, which aims at scaling up resources for infrastructure investment to increase economic growth, job creation, and meeting of the Millennium Development Goals.
“We are putting agriculture and food security first. These are priorities given the recent increases in food prices. Accordingly, The Gambia National Agriculture Investment Program was launched with the objective of achieving increased contributions to agriculture and GDP whilst ensuring food security through the targeting of investments in land preparation, irrigation, and provision of agricultural imports.”
Minister Njie further added that in ensuring the attainment of these targets, the Gambia government has doubled the budgetary allocation to these sectors and will continue to increase the allocations to enhance the attainment of the 2003 Maputo Declaration target.
Written by PK Jarju
“dark days ahead”, as Njie put. ">Watch
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Comments
GO BACK TO SCHOOL. "god" not the almighty as you can see that I use "god not God" Your ignorance is making it difficult to read the good entries.
Please give us your" Economic" in depth analysis of the past, present and future.
We are waiting...
Scary times ahead?
Comment:
Well Toubaabu-Man, We only hope that the former Finance minister of UK.
The God, I don't mean The Almight.
But Gordon The Brown can tell us more about this, because he once said that, He has safe the Economy !
In the service of the truth I remain
However,governm ents and particularly western governments at this time..are increasingly losing control of there internal ability to control there economies.
This dangerous phenonomen..first reared its "ugly head" in 1994...when Britain was forced out of the exchange rate mechanism {ERM} by massive {unknown}specul ation of the international exchange rate...ala the pound.
Thus exposing a mighty economy such as GB to such "speculative forces".
The speed at which the electronic/satelite exchanges now takes place around the world...is now without any regulation...and is beyond control of any independant nation.
This means in effect;
A global trading company or bank...can be devalued within an day.
A nation can be bankrupted within a Month.
..and an entire continent laid waste..within a six months.
Scary times ahead?
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