By: Kebba AF Touray
The Gambia’s Minister for Finance, Seedy Kieta, said non-tax revenue from the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA) grew by 104 percent, reaching D1.72 billion.
Mr Keita reported this while making an oral statement on the implementation and monitoring of the 2923 annual budget before legislators on Monday, 4 March 2024, in Banjul.
“Non-tax revenue recorded an over performance of 31 percent reaching D3.89 billion, compared to a budget of D2.97 billion in the fiscal year of 2023,” he said.
He explained that the GRA non-tax revenue growth was against a budget of D841.4 million, and the growth is on account of impressive performance from customs processing fees and fuel levies.
“Budget support has exceeded its budget by 48 percent, and this is attributable to the good performance of the December disbursement of budget support amounting to D4,085 million by development partners,” he said, adding that the overall expenditure amounts to D20.4 billion, which is beyond the budget for the year by just 0.6 percent.
Minister Keita noted that while they were able to curtail with discretion the expenditure within their budget, statutory expenditure such as Personnel Emoluments (PEs) and interest payments exceeded their annual budget, due to unexpected increase both in wage bills and interest payments by 12 percent and 4 percent respectively. The finance minister added that the overturn expenditure in PEs can be attributed mainly to MoBSE’s D470 million, MoFEA’s D320 million, Interior Ministry’s D83 million and Ministry of Health’s D81 million. He said expenditure on other charges was judiciously managed within their budget with an execution rate of 99 percent, saying expenditure on debt interest exceeded its annual budget by 4 percent due to 10 percent increase in domestic interest payment. That this short-term nature of domestic debt portfolio has exposed it from interest rates to hike rates. He concluded that budget implementation during the period has been prudent, adding that overall actual revenue budget over-performed by D2.2 billion and actual expenditure inclined with budget only on an over run of 0.6 percent leading to a surplus of D1.5 billion.
“The milestones are realized in the budget support more than expected. Fiscal measures will continue to be instituted to support a prudent budget implementation whilst making the needed expenditure to support growth,” he said.
