Officials of the
Organised by the Insurance Association of The Gambia (IAG), as part of events marking the weeklong insurance awareness week that started on Monday, the seminar was held to discuss the insurance industry’s role in the effective implementation and success of the PAGE.
“The main purpose of the lecture is to deliberate on a specific subject that impacts on the insurance industry,” said Dawda Sarge, president of the IAG, while delivering the keynote address on the occasion.
“That being the case, I believe we can all agree that nothing will have more impact on the insurance industry and indeed other sectors of the economy than the Gambia Government’s development and investment programme for the period 2012 to 2015.”
The main objective of the PAGE is to significantly increase the welfare of the Gambians through accelerated and sustained economic growth and employment creation by the year 2015.
It is constructed around five main pillars with each one having very explicit priority actions to enable government roll out its development strategy during the period 2012 – 2015.
“I would like to take a quick look at two of these pillars and see how they create an opportunity for the insurance industry to participate,” said Mr. Sarge, who is also the managing director of Prime Insurance Company Limited.
He continued: “The first is accelerating and sustaining economic growth by strengthening the main sources of economic growth such as the agriculture sector. The PAGE informs us that in terms of employment, agriculture is the most pro-poor sector in The Gambia’s economy, accounting for 70% of jobs in 2010. It is also the country’s main source of income and plays an important role in reducing poverty through the generation of farmers’ incomes and improving food security among other socio-economic benefits.”
Mr. Sarge pointed out that a serious crop failure has a cascading effect, which can ultimately lead to serious repercussions for the entire community. Therefore, he noted, as risk carriers, the role of insurance is to provide the required security for the operators in this sector to strengthen productivity.
Agricultural insurance is widely recognised as an efficient instrument and a better mechanism with which to handle problems associated with crop failure, such as drought and flood, rather than the provision of ad hoc aid or disaster relief.
The second pillar of the PAGE, Mr. Sarge highlighted, is that of reinforcing social protection. Although there are plausible social protection schemes in the country, the government still desires to strengthen these by enabling people to protect themselves from risk and other possible interruptions or loss of income that could impact their lives, the IAG president remarked.
He says investing in social protection will create a virtuous circle of improved productivity and vocation within the economy. “One such investment that readily comes to mind is the provision of a nation-wide health insurance scheme, not only for public servants, but for the entire citizenry,” he noted.
In his PowerPoint presentation, Samba Jallow, a representative from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, told insurance practitioners that the principal thrust of the PAGE is that it offers opportunities to the insurance industry.
Ahaotus Festus Chukwuma, managing director of Capital Express Assurance Company Limited, in his remarks, said the insurance industry can contribute to evaluating the achievement of PAGE by reducing vulnerability and uncertainty.
The industry can devise packages that will allow majority of Gambian people to gain access to basic services in a sustainable manner, added Mr. Chukwuma.
In a similar development, on Thursday the IAG held its annual general meeting at the same venue, where members discussed the association’s achievements and challenges over the previous year and charted a new way forward.
The meeting brought together all member companies of the IAG to discuss issues of common concern geared towards building a very vibrant insurance industry for the common good of all.
