FactCheck: Did Total Salaries Increase by 110% Under President Barrow’s Leadership?
Finance Minister Hon Seedy Keita tables 2025 Executive Budget © Askanwi
By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
The Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs (MoFEA), Hon. Seedy S. Keita tabled the 2025 Budget in Parliament on Thursday 15th November, 2025 requesting approval for a 30% salary increase.
During the tabling of the budget, the Finance Minister highlighted that since President Adama Barrow took over salaries have increased by 110%.
Claim: “This 2025 salary increment will make a total salary increase of 60% from 2022 to 2025. And it will bring the total salary increase to 110% under the leadership of HE Adama Barrow”.
Fact-Check:
Minister Keita said that “the projected increase in personnel emolument expenditures from the approved figure of D7.39 billion for 2024 to D8.93 billion in 2025 is largely driven by the projected D1.54 billion impact from the proposed increase in salaries and the increase of transport and residential allowances.
“The increase in the personnel emoluments is due to an average increase of 30% in the salaries of the core civil service. In addition, the transport and house rent allowances will be increased from D1,500 to D3,000 and from D1,700 to D3,500 respectively.
“These increases in allowances will apply to grades 1- 8 under the integrated pay scale of the civil service.”
Our Budget research has provided figures for the actual expenditure on compensation of employees which includes wages, salaries and other allowances for the years 2017 and 2022. Our research also led us to the 2025 budget which details the government’s estimated figure for compensation of employees which includes wages, salaries and other allowances.
With figures covering the years referenced by the Minister of Finance, our reporter calculated the differences and the percentage differences shown below to verify. After our calculations were completed, they were shared with an Economist and a senior official at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs for verification. Through this engagement our reporter was informed that total salaries is also referred to as personnel emoluments and is included as compensation of employees in the budget. This includes wages and salaries as well as social security contributions.
The figures below are in billions.
Source: Figure for 2017 actual is from 2019 budget, 2022 actual is from the 2024 budget and 2025 estimates is from the recently issued 2025 budget.
Our calculation shows that compensation of employees increased by 57% from 2022 to 2025 which is only 3% less than the 60% stated by Finance Minister, Seedy Keita.
On the second claim that total salary increased by 110% under the leadership of President Adama Barrow, our reporter managed to access data from the MoFEA which provides figures for the actual compensation paid to employees for 2017. Our calculation shows that the compensation of employees increased by over 290% from 2017 – when President Adama Barrow took over from former President Jammeh – to 2025.
Verdict: According to our calculations which have been verified by an Economist and a senior official at the Ministry of Finance, the Finance Minister’s statement that there will be a “total salary increase of 60% from 2022 to 2025” is 3% shy of the amount as per our research. The actual increase we calculated is 57%.
On the second claim that that “salary increase to 110% under the leadership of HE Adama Barrow”, our calculations shows that salaries increased by over 290%, which is more than twice the increase cited by the Finance Minister.
Therefore, the Finance Minister’s statements are found to be MISLEADING.
This article was first published by FactCheckGambia.org in the link. https://factcheckgambia.org/fact-check-did-total-salaries-increase-by-110-under-president-barrows-leadership/
