The National Food Security Processing and Marketing Corporation (formerly called GGC) has finally put an end to the speculation regarding the groundnut trade in The Gambia. It has issued a statement indicating that the farm gate price of groundnut is D28,000 per tonne.
Now Foroyaa will go to the ‘seccos’ to find out whether money is flowing so that there will be no credit buying of groundnuts. GGC would have to get the money to finance the trade season.
One should expect that the government will again turn to the tax money paid by the citizens to subsidize the price to enable them to meet the price promised by the president during his campaign. It should therefore be clear to all and sundry that the tax money of the population is the main source of subsidies to increase groundnut prices. Unless there are new sources of taxation to fund the subsidies there will be reduction of allocation of resources at one source in order to finance the subsidy. This is how public finance works.
Currently there is no sovereign wealth fund that is worth the name and significant public investment to meet such a fund. The government depends entirely on taxation, grants and loans. Hence public finance is a jigsaw where money is taken from one end to please one end at the disadvantage of another. We need to break the cycle.
