The GID surpassed the yearly target with D62,454,400, which represents about 41.64%.
Officials said the GID, under the leadership of its Director General Seedy Touray, has also projected to collect D170,000,000 in 2024.
“This enviable mark was achieved due to reflection of the massive increase in persons accessing immigration services over the period under review and also guaranteed effective monitoring of our financial processes and procedures leading to the blocking of revenue leakages and further ensuring that all monies collected at the various revenue collection points are paid into the various designated accounts and vigorous enforcement activities embarked upon by the enforcement unit of the GID,” Commissioner of Finance Karanlang Jarju of the GID said.
Commissioner Jarju, who was speaking yesterday at the GID Headquarters in Banjul, said: “Despite the economic challenges that the country is experiencing, The Gambia Immigration Department will work around the clock to ensure that this positive trend is carried over to next year, with more revenue measures being put in place. These measures include strengthening operational efficiencies, improvement and modernisation of systems, opening more issuing centres, and building and opening more new stations, and provision of mobility.”
The GID Commissioner of Finance further stated: “The GID Director General has made momentous changes and improvement and also immensely catapulted the GID to its proper seat, among others, in the dispensation of its constitutional mandates. In our opinion, the level of service that he has extended to our immigration department is far beyond our expectation.”
The GID through prudent measures, he added, issued fifty-three thousand nine hundred Dalasis (D53,900) on various categories of permits to non-Gambians. This is 13.61% increase over 2022 figure of forty-seven thousand four hundred and forty-five dalasis (D47,445).
He explained that the number of Machine Readable Passport has increased from D21,476 in 2022 to D25,435 in 2023 representing a variance of D3,959, while the Biometric Passport increased from D40,099 in 2022 to D47,965 in 2023 representing a variance of D7,866.
Low budgetary allocation
Over the years, he said, the department has been among the highest contributors to the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF). “However, it is the least-resourced agency under the Ministry of Interior,” he pointed out. “The GID as a growing institution, requires major budgetary allocation in order to help it develop its infrastructure to a level that will enable it to improve upon its efficiency and effectiveness in this dynamic world where migration has become very complex and evolving.”
For his part, Supt. Saidou S. Bah, the Officer Commanding the Research and Planning Unit of the GID, said: “The unprecedented breakthrough of the revenue collection is as a result of the GID compliance to the reform process which was dictated by the National Development Plan (NDP).”
Bah added: “We also initiated our own reform processes and assessment with a view to know our strength and weakness and know where we want to go as an institution. We also decided to come up with a strategic plan, which is embedded with 10 goals.”
He went on: “We have committed ourselves as a department to review our bill. Our bill has been in existence since 1965. So, one needs to understand that the realities in The Gambia in 1965 are very much different from what we are going through today. We have tasked ourselves as an institution to ensure that our immigration bill is reviewed, and it is making progress with our partners. Once it is finalised, it will address all the challenges we are encountering as an institution.”
Concluding, he stated: “We have also developed so many policies which will be the guiding tools of the institution. As we speak today, anything you do at the GID must be guided by policy. We have developed policies across the board. For anything you are doing, it must go through the right policies. We have developed policies on transport and posting, promotion and on vehicles among others.”
