Gambia-L:

The e-mail below is from a source in The Gambia.

Bamba Laye: As usual, I enjoyed reading your reaction to the 2003 Budget
Speech. Keep it up!

Ebrima Ceesay

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Hello Coach,

I am in Bakau at the moment and of course, with a lot of free time in my
hands. So I thought that I should send you some comments on the 2003 Budget
Speech.

I find this year's Budget to be most insensitive ever. In fact, the impact
of the punitive taxes levied on trades people, most of whom are foreigners,
is already beginning to manifest itself. Some Senegalese tradesmen,
particularly those without families in The Gambia, are beginning to make
arrangements to return to Senegal.

Sidia Jatta warned during the budget debate about the impact the 1000
Dalasis levied on ECOWAS citizens residing in The Gambia, most of whom are
Ghanaians, Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans. And these are the people who
currently man our schools as teachers.

A drop in the numbers of this category of teachers, coupled with a continued
rise in the attrition rate of Gambian teachers, only spells disaster for the
education sector which is already experiencing serious qualitative
deterioration, despite increased spending on buildings. The "software"
aspect of education: teachers, supplies, consumables etc. continues to be
neglected.

The 2003 Budget Speech, by the way, is anything but transparent in its
presentation. Take a look at annex 1 (Sectoral Allocation). Go through the
two tables and see what I mean. Compare the current expenditure column and
the development. See that the Classification/categorisation are completely
different. This is deliberate to make it difficult to compare the two.

Under Others*, see the explanatory note to see what debts have been lumped
together. Under Miscellaneous, they did not bother to say what constitutes
this category. This is the sort of thing that landed us in the current
predicament that we curently find ourselves below-the-line (BTL)
expenditures including programmed ones.

Still on the same tables, look at the percentages to see priority of
Government. Apart from Education and Health, everything else appears to be
out of line with what is expected. And look at the expenditure on
Agriculture and compare this with that of with my office ( President's
Office). This in fact does not take into account Defense and Interior.

I have not yet started looking at the numbers particularly the monetary
aggregates which should require some disaggregation and some extrapolation,
which again, is deliberate. I also need to study the 1999 and 2000 Budgets
to verify some figures. The 2002 budget, as you know, is on the State House
Web Page.


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