By Arret Jatta
The Commissioner General of Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA), Yankuba Darboe says most of the big ships and cargoes cannot land in Banjul port because of the nature of the port so therefore most cargoes land in Senegal instead.
The Commissioner General said this at a press conference held by GRA in Banjul at the GRA headquarters on Wednesday 3rd April.
“Business men are free to choose where their cargoes will be drop and come to the final destination, so therefore Gambia as a country we have a port and Senegal has a port, but most of the time there are certain vessel and because of the heaviness of the vessel they cannot come to Gambia because of the depth of the sea if they try to come they cannot even come because it has to go so many meters deep,” Commissioner General explains.
He added that when the ships land in Senegal the goods are transported to the Gambia by trucks and this process itself is very difficult and very expensive for the business community.
“What we wish is to see that our port itself is upgraded to the level where this big vessels will come so that at the end of the day it will bring the cargoes direct to Banjul offload and it goes to their stores and I’m sure my brother MD is working on that to make sure that the ports infrastructures are improved to a point that vessels will be able to come to Banjul without any problem but as long as that is not done it will be very difficult in fact it will be impossible for some of these big vessels to just come from Europe, America or Asia directly to Banjul”, Mr. Darboe further explained.
He, however, says that they are working with the Gambia Port Authority (GPA) and the government of the Gambia to address this issue.
