The Gambia’s cruising economic voyage is of late presenting ground-breaking results. The manifestations at the tale end of 2007 suggest a promising 2008 in terms of economic growth and human development prospects.

First it was the 2008 budget presentation by the able SoS Bala Gaye which revealed a positive outlook in the country’s ever relentless strive towards achieving the much talked about millennium development goals as well as the postulates of The Gambia government’s own development proclamation, as enshrined in the Vision 20/20 blue print, both of which envisage making poverty history.

Present revelations by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), declaring The Gambia as the 23rd country to have reached the completion point under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries(HIPC) Initiative, could not have come at a better time. Call it a ‘verdict of realism.’ It is indeed a reassuring vindication of the prudent economic and monetary policies being spearheaded by the government of the day, under the leadership of President Alhaji Dr Yahya Jammeh, all in the face of distractive, negative forces aimed at slowing down progress towards such an achievement.

As the SoS Bala-Gaye put it in his last budget presentation, behind the words and numbers of that budget speech were the policies and also the decisions that reflect the directions government had set for itself and for the country, and also commitment it had made to reduce poverty and attain the MDGs. “Taken together, these will help shape the nations journey for 2008 and beyond.” This, however, to a large extent, calls for consolidation of present gains. And to borrow from the SOS’s words in the same speech, our goal should be “to use the fruits of our present success to sow the seeds of future achievements.

To reach this ground-breaking completion point, The Gambia is said to have met a number of criteria aimed at maintaining a sound macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline, all geared towards raising the standard of living of its populace. And the verdict of the IMF Mission chief sums it all. Small Gambia “has established a good track record of policy implementation in 2007. Now what this confirms is that the ultimate benefit associable with this resounding success includes lowering of debt burden and effectively freeing up resources to redeploy to priority areas like health, education, etc..

It also confirms that the significance of this development lies not only in the immediate short-term gains for The Gambia, but also in the fact that other developing nations stand the chance of sharing knowledge in the prudent measures taken by the country to reach this  point. We congratulate His Excellency Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh, his government, and specially SoS Bala Gaye and his team at the Department of State for Finance.