Musa Gibril Bala Gaye, Secretary of State for Finance and Economic Affairs, will today 14th December present before deputies at the National Assembly the 2008 budget estimates and expenditures of the government of the Gambia as required by the 1997 constitution and the budget management and accountability act 2004.

This presentation by the Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary of State follows the submission of the draft estimates of revenues, recurrent and development expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 to the National Assembly on Monday, 3rd December and debated last Tuesday 12th December 2007.

Secy Gaye in his presentation of the budget today is expected to, among other things, highlight the general policies of the government, its development strategy for the year 2008 and of course Gambia’s position on the much talked about Economic Partnership Agreement due to be signed on 1st January 2008 between the African, Caribbean and Pacific states and the European Union.

It would be recalled that the Finance and Economic Affairs Secy in his presentation of last years (2007) budget before members of the National Assembly on 18th December 2007, mentioned that government had identified ambitious policy objectives for the second phase of its education programme (2004-2015), and that substantial attention would be given to expanding access to quality education, especially for girls.

On women and development, Secy Gaye highlighted in his 2007 budget speech that government had identified a site for multi purpose market for women, and has also established a women’s self-help co-operative to assist women with micro credit for income generating activities.

“More focus would be placed on other system issues, such as the high attrition rate of nurses and midwives, to ensure skilled supervision of mothers during pregnancy to enable the detection of potential problems and provision of basic obstetrics care,” Secy Gaye added.

On population, Secy Bala Gaye revealed that the overall goal of the national population policy is to improve the quality of life and raise the standard of living of all Gambians with some of the demographic indicators being poverty.