Vision:
To create systems of services value chain that adapts (resilient), connects and supports all economic and social activities, including physical infrastructure (transport networks, energy, water, sanitation and waste), financial markets and telecommunication technology that provides essential services and sustenance of economic development.
Mission:
To develop a modern infrastructure that supports and facilitates all economic and social activities including industrial development by constructing roads, modern port, river transport and rail in the long term. Furthermore, we want to develop a sustainable and affordable energy source, resilient water and sanitation networks, telecommunication network, and an integrated financial market, which makes exchanges such as doing business easier, less costly, and transparent. The provision of these infrastructure networks will provide incentives for all types of transactions, investments and competitiveness that will continually spur economic growth, lower unemployment, and improve our quality of life.
Policies:
The success and sustenance of any economic and social structure requires a developed and integrated infrastructure that connects all economic and social activities and make these activities easier. Our policy will continually focus on identifying and providing the necessary resources for investments in key infrastructure prerequisite for economic, industrial and social development in the short and medium term, while in the long term priority shifts to sustainability through maintenance and upgrading. Through our land reforms policy, the Gambian government will be able to identify all the infrastructure needed for sustainable development in the medium and long term, and its associated costs and timeline of achievements. Infrastructure development requires huge financial and material resource mobilisation. Hence, it further requires a policy on sources of financing, and policy on whether a nation’s infrastructure network should all or partly be treated as a public or private good, in order to establish responsibilities regarding future financing needs and maintenance. We will work with all stakeholders to ensure sustainability and adaptability of our infrastructure continues to facilitate economic and social activities. To achieve this, the government will create an Infrastructure Development Fund with systematic costing, as well as involve the private sector in the funding of some infrastructures in a cost effective manner (some infrastructures are better treated as a public good). Our view is that some of the infrastructure such as road, ports, energy and telecommunication poles and wires, and cables and servers respectively, should be owned by the people and allow the private sector to compete on another front.
Programmes:
- Increase the construction of road networks across the country. This would be made easy through our land reform programme with clear demarcation.
- Build a new port to increase capacity and competitiveness in the sub-region
- Invest in the provision of sustainable and affordable energy required for industrial production and makes daily lives of residents comfortable.
- Work with the telecommunication industry to make communication accessible and affordable to the entire population.
- Work with the financial institutions to integrate the informal economy into the formal sector, and to make payments within the country easier, and with the rest of the world
- Create manufacturing zones with incentives and security to attract private sector investment in non-public goods provisions.
- In the long term, develops a rail system that connects all supply chains.
- Improve our regulatory quality of our economic and social actors in order to make service delivery efficient.