Speaking at the press briefing held at its Kanifing office, Statistician General Nyakassi M.B. Sanyang emphasised that GBoS is an arm of government mandated by an act of parliament to collect, compile, analyse and disseminate reliable official statistics for policy formation and evidence-based decision-making and to coordinate the National Statistical System.
He explained that the National Accounts Unit of the Bureau being aware of the importance and the need for a more comprehensive performance assessment of the economy on a short-term basis, considered producing QGDP to complement its routine annual GDP compilation by the production and expenditure approaches.
The Statistician General further stated that the importance of QGDP is enormous and cannot be overemphasised while adding that Quarterly GDP guides in policymaking and strategic decision-making in monitoring business cycles, macroeconomic projections, surveillance, programme design, and informed policy advice.
“It also avails the opportunity to realise: Comparability of National Accounts data production across the region; early identification of changes in trends; timely implementation of economic policies; early estimates of annual accounts; econometric modelling, including studies of seasonal patterns; and price and volume decomposition of nominal growths.”
He revealed that the National Accounts Unit of GBoS with the technical assistance of the IMF AFRITAC West 2, after a long and hectic journey of compiling the QGDP, has now seen light at the end of the tunnel to produce the QGDP series from the first quarter of 2013 to the fourth quarter of 2022 published today along with the final annual GDP estimates of 2021 which were provisional.
Mr Sanyang explained that the accomplishment of compiling QGDP is a great and laudable milestone in line with the doctrines of the 2008 Systems of National Accounts (SNA) compilation manual produced by the United Nations Statistical Commission and the 2017 IMF Quarterly National Accounts Manual. He added that GBoS is cognisant of the challenges that lie ahead to produce reliable, consistent, and frequent national accounts estimates including the compilation of the Supply and Use Tables (SUTs) to enable them to achieve a balanced GDP by the Production, Income and Expenditure approaches in one snapshot.
“The Gambia Bureau of Statistics is currently in collaboration with the government of The Gambia and international partners to mobilise resources to rebase the current GDP base year of 2013 to 2022 using SUT. Funding is being anticipated and we hope this exercise will take place soon.”
