By Assan Bah
Mr Basiru Njie, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Gambia Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (GCCPC) has advised for continued dialogue between the government and the cement importers association.
Njie spoke to Foroyaa on Tuesday, 02 July 2024 on the much talked-about import duty increment by the government of the Gambia on bagged cement coming via the border.
When asked if the commission has made any investigations on the matter he said: “We have not done any investigations or surveys on the current cement issues, because we currently have a work plan, we are competition and consumer protection commission. We therefore, touch all sectors of the economy.
He said one of the reasons for the commission not doing any investigations on the matter is because of limited resources. “We cannot be focussing on all the sectors at the same time. We have some critical issues that we are dealing with, like market surveillances and things like that. As we speak, we do not have the manpower to investigate the current cement issues like we used to do in recent years.
According to Njie, the cement sector is one of the most studied sector by the commission and they have given a lot of policy advice to the government. He added, “We therefore, deemed it necessary to give attention to other sectors as well.”
He further said: “There is not much we can say about the cement because we only give policy advice to the government on issues that we have conducted proper research on. We are hearing it only on the news but we have not conducted any survey to establish a position and advice the government.
When asked if they [GCCPC] were consulted on the import duty increment he said: “No, I am not aware of any official consultation”
He confirmed meeting with the importers association: “Yes, we did meet them when their trucks were stuck at the border. We told them that, this is not what we are currently looking at because we have our focus on other pertinent issues and have not done any proper assessment on the issue. We need to have a sense of direction as a commission.”
When asked if the commission had any plan to give attention to the current cement issues, as some parts of rural Gambia are allegedly buying a bag of cement at D525, D440 to D425 in Basse and North Bank respectively, he said: “It will be very difficult to leave our investigations in some of the sectors to divert to other issues.”
He however, said: “We are not downplaying the cement sector, it is the most studied sector in the commission. We do all our investigations with our staff on the ground, which requires lot of money and we are a sub-vented institution and all our resources cannot be used on one sector.
“We are here to ensure that consumers are well-protected, it is just unfortunate that we cannot be in all the sectors at the same time due to our limited resources as our staff size is currently less than thirty people. We are currently having talks with government to have decentralised structures,” he added.
Ceesay said: “The only advice we currently have for both the government and the traders is to continue the dialogue. We would not be able to give any policy advice as we have not conducted any research on the issue,” adding part of their principle is prioritisation to ensure efficiency.
He advised consumers and suppliers to abide by the Competition and Consumer Protection Act. “Let them continue to dialogue while we continue our work on the other sectors.”
