The Taiwanese Ambassador to The Gambia, His Excellency Dr Patrick Chang, has praised The Gambia’s Business Forum an initiative, which he said, needs to be a continued.

Ambassador Chang made these remarks at the Kairaba Beach Hotel on Wednesday where he served as the guest speaker on the hotel’s monthly Business Society Forum otherwise known as Gambia’s Business Forum. He commended the organisers for the initiative.

The business forum aims, among other things, to promote and give an insight into the functions and works carried out by institutions and organisations and also to provide a platform where invited guests can ask questions when necessary. It also aims to provide a social evening for The Gambia’s Business Society to interact in a relaxed atmosphere and sample the fine cuisine, compliments of Kairaba Hotel. 

The guest speaker Dr Chang despite his busy scheduled took the opportunity to hail the significant developments registered by the Gambian government under the leadership of President Jammeh, particularly in the areas of health, education, agriculture and infrastructure development. “This country is going to have a very promising economy in the future,” he said. Close to 50 years ago Taiwan’s per capita income was like The Gambia’s but through hard work Taiwan now have a per capita income of US$12000 nowadays. This is thanks, he added, to the full utilization of her human resources. Originally Taiwan was a kind of agricultural society but later had to develop the industry. “ The United States have supported the country at that time in the form of donations to help them develop. Dr. Chang said, “in turn we are supposed to also to support Africa.” An example of this help is their qualified technical teams in their ally countries. “We have our total trade volume at four hundred billion US dollars per year and export surplus of over two hundred billion,” said Dr. Chang. Taiwan is a focal point for major IT industry where manufacturing products, he revealed. He added that the Taiwan trade exhibition center has also been organising year round events of this kind.

Mr. Jame’s Tsay, leader of the Taiwan Technical Mission in The Gambia, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the overview of their operations in the country which commenced 13 years ago. Several business and organization heads, UN Agencies and staff of the Taiwanese Embassy attended the event.