National Assembly Members in The Gambia
have undergone some rigorous training to equip them with the skills to
critically analyse and scrutinize the annual budget estimates of the government
as well as on how to examine the core policy strategies and development
objectives of the government vis-à-vis the budget.
The training was recently organised by
the Pro-Poor Advocacy Group with the financial support of
the United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the African
Development Bank (AfDB) under the Institutional Support for Economic and
Financial Governance project.
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| Speaker Abdoulie Bojang |
The two-day workshop was held to ensure
the country’s lawmakers make informed decisions on the allocation of resources
for the social priority sectors; to enable them to assess the adequacy or
otherwise of the levels of funding provided for the social priority sectors to
meet the Millennium Development Goals and Programme for Accelerated Growth and
Employment (PAGE) - the Gambia government’s development blueprint; to identify
the funding shortfalls thereto; and to discuss strategies and sector proposals
for resource mobilisation.
Speaking on the occasion, Speaker of the
National Assembly Abdoulie Bojang said the training was necessary to equip parliamentarians
to put due emphasis on the rationale behind the policy strategies and goals of
government.
“As elective representatives of the
people, we are inclined to put emphasis into the social priority sectors of
health, education and agriculture without necessarily limiting ourselves to
only these sectors, as all other sectors and cross-cutting issues are equally
important,” he said.
