Honourable Fatoumata Jahumpa-Ceesay, Speaker of the National Assembly of The Gambia has revealed that access to financial services which is savings and credit facilities for the hitherto excluded and informal sectors of our domestic economy is crucial for meaningful and sustainable socio-economic development and continuous prosperity of a country.

Speaker Jahumpa-Ceesay made this revelation on Saturday during the official inauguration of the new Reliance Financial Services kiosk at the Albert Market in Banjul.

According to her, this view was re-affirmed and re-acclaimed worldwide last year, when the Indian Professor Mohammed Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for providing and sustaining micro-finance credit and services that made a big difference for millions of poor families and peoples in the Indian sub-continent. She added that, micro-credit has proven to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against exclusion.

“Like Professor Yunus, our long term vision is to eliminate or reduce poverty nationwide not only by means of micro-credit, but as a crucial major part of the solution for poverty eradication”.

According to FJC, the government of The Gambia under President Jammeh’s leadership has put in place appropriate policy and institutional frameworks, and unparalleled goodwill to eradicate poverty through the empowerment of women and development of the private sector simultaneously as enshrined in the APRC’s development blue prints, PRSP/SPA II and The Gambia’s incorporated vision 2020, she concluded.