By Adama Makasuba
The Governor of Central Bank of The Gambia has dismissed the reports of Nigerian Central Bank to mint currency for The Gambia.
Buah Saidy refuted this as he received questions from journalists during the quarterly monitoring policy committee meeting in Banjul.
“The Central Bank is too busy to help develop this country; we are in a desperate situation. What we are focus on is to help this country and Gambians enjoys stable prices, a very stable financial sector with high level of liquidity to invest and improve the quality of lives of the Gambian people. And make sure that the exchange rate in dalasi is at a very good equilibrium, where it is not overvalued to the disadvantage at the level of the Gambians,” he said.
According to him, if they are to print the Gambian currency he said they “will be very transparent as a Central Bank [and] we will invite bids from printers globally and they will send in their bids in accordance with the GPPA requirement then we will award the contract.”
However, he continued that: “the outstanding domestic debt stock increased to D36.5 billion in the first eight months of 2021 relative to D33.5 billion in the comparative period in 2020. The moderate rate of growth in debt stock was in line with the government’s debt management strategy of reducing debt accumulation as well as smoothening and re-profiling the debt stock.”
Security yields on the domestic debt market continue to trend downwards from a year ago in line with the expansionary monetary policy stance of the Bank, he said.
