Every government of the Gambia that has come to office so far believes that the private sector is the engine of growth. Today many Gambian owned businesses have actually collapsed. In many countries in the world businesses have their brand name with century old records. Today one can hardly see a Gambian company with a brand name to have lasted as old as the country. In many cases Gambian businesses are just fronts of other businesses.
The ministry of finance and economic affairs needs to do a special study of the state of play of Gambian businesses in collaboration with GCCI to fully assess how Gambian businesses with original capital are faring and how much they are contributing to the GDP of the country.
This is the only way that one would be able to assess the present contribution of Gambian businesses to the socioeconomic development of the country. We must move away from sloganeering and look at the facts and figures.
