This opinion piece delves into the government’s plans to increase taxes by 23% in 2025 and interrogates the National Assembly’s role in reviewing the Government Revenue Measures. Will Parliament debate this important issue which will impact cost of living next year?

Information received by Askanwi Media highlights that the Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs (MoFEA) will table the 2025 Draft Budget tomorrow 15th November requesting Parliamentary approval for over D52.9 Billion in expenditure.

Our monitoring of Parliament has revealed that the Finance Minister may have failed to comply with the Amended provision 152 (1) to table the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure sixty (60) days before the end of the year which was the last day of October 2024. Parliament is also failing its role to monitor the implementation of the 2024 Budget since the First Ordinary Session.

In July 2024, two of the country’s leading newspapers reported or published articles stating that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) rejected a partnership to establish a special tribunal in The Gambia to try perpetrators identified in the Truth, Reparations and Reconciliation Commission (TRRC).

The headlines are MISLEADING.

This factsheet highlights how members of the sixth legislature voted on the Parliamentary Report prepared by the Joint Committee on Bill to repeal the ban on Female Genital Mutilation / Circumcision.

Since the exchange of press releases between the Judiciary, the National Assembly’s Finance and Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office earlier in April 2024, the question remained unanswered as to when the Judiciary was last audited. This article aims to verify the last time the Judiciary was audited.

The Gambia’s Judiciary Service and the National Assembly’s Finance and Public Accounts Committee were at loggerheads over the submission of the Judiciary’s audited accounts after a scheduled April 18, 2024 didn’t hold. This article seeks to verify why the meeting did not hold.

President Adama Barrow is expected to lay the foundation stone for a US$100 Million Hotel to be built for the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Summit scheduled to be held in The Gambia. According to the OIC Gambia CEO and the Branding and Communications Lead, the Gambia Government will only benefit from a 10% share of the proceeds of the Hotel.

In a 2021 State of Affairs interview conducted by QTV’s Alieu Ceesay, President Adama Barrow declared that the extension of the ECOMIG Forces mandate in the Gambia “is about Executive decision, this is not about National Assembly.”