By Arret Jatta
The Public Finance Accounts Committee of the National Assembly (FPAC), has recommended reductions of the budget allocations to the Office of the President and other government institutions.
According to a report, FPAC wants a total of D25,400,000 and D19,000,000 be reduced from the recurrent and development budgets of the Office of the President respectively.
It has also recommended that the D3,000,000 Operating Cost under the development budget be utilised as Personnel Emoluments (PE) and Operating Costs (OC) for the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA.
The committee further recommended for the reduction of the National Assembly’s budget, taking D6,250,000 from the recurrent budget and D5,000,000 from the development budget.
FPAC also wants the sum of D86,101,338 be reduced from the recurrent budget of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
“This reduction applies to almost all government institutions and some are reallocated to other government agencies like allocation of D100,000,000 to the National Roads Authority for road rehabilitation,” the committee said,
During the debate on the 2025 budget estimates, the National Assembly Member for Latrikunda Sabiji Yahya Sanyang said ‘it is sad that for the third consecutive year, the minister has present a budget that is bad news for Gambians.’
“Looking at the budget, I did not see any portion that is going to alleviate poverty in this country. In fact, the budget is made to entrench poverty and for me the policy direction of every good budget around the world should be to minimise poverty, he said.
He also said that “it is very annoying to see the presidents Meet the People Tour budget increased from D30 million to D50 million. “This is unacceptable when the scholarship for higher education has been reduced drastically,”he said.
