State House, Banjul, 14th February 2019 – In its third meeting of 2019, Cabinet deliberated on a paper presented by the Hon Minister of Petroleum and Energy on the reform of the petroleum sector which includes amendment of the petroleum ACT 2004 and the establishment of an autonomous petroleum commission.
Cabinet was informed that while the current Petroleum Act has been instrumental in bringing in investment into the sector, as the industry moves to the next level in the exploration cycle upstream ,there is need to review the Act to align it with the current developments.
The final paper presented to Cabinet was by myself the Honorable Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure on the outcome of a World Bank funded options study for restructuring Government’s supply-side participation in the country’s telecom markets in order to achieve its policy objectives of providing essential public services, strengthening its fiscal performance, and improving telecoms sector performance and competition.
The options study by the World Bank looked at four main issues:
- Restructuring options for national fibre infrastructure;
- Restructuring options for retail mobile business unit (Gamcel Core);
- Restructuring options for retail fixed business unit (Gamtel Core); and
- Restructuring options for government of The Gambia’s interests in the Gambia Submarine Cable (GSC).
Cabinet deliberated on the options study on Gamtel and Gamcel and a final decision on this will be made in the next Cabinet meeting.
