Held at the Bakadaji Hotel, the theme of the event was ‘Sensitization on investment incentives process and procedures for efficient service delivery’. The convergence engaged 73 Special Investment Certificate (SIC) and Special Export Promotion Zone License (EPZL) holders awarded by The Gambia government with a net investment portfolio of US$268 million.
Modou Lamin Sowe, director of investment promotion and facilitation at GiEPA explained that when serving people or clients, they should at least come together annually and have a dialogue. Through the dialogue, he said, they will be able to assess how well they served their sector.
“Our mandate is to promote and facilitate investments and export. We are issuing incentives to these businesses and we need to come together to see the impacts. The takeaway is to bring improvement in the business environment because we always have to work to make it better. We have a conversation on the challenges faced which includes the ports in order to create the enabling environment,” he stated.
Dwelling on their role to support investors, Sowe added that their job is to ensure that if there are barriers or challenges, they work to resolve them. He added they have many mechanisms for doing that, saying it includes bilateral engagements with sister institutions.
On support to businesses ahead of Gambia’s AfCFTA negotiation, he said: “The AfCFTA is going to be huge changes for entire Africa because it’s a common market. We are now in the final stages of negotiating the investment protocol. The investment protocol is very important and we will be doing stakeholder engagements on the AfCFTA because this means removing the borders so that investment can flow.”
Isatou Njie, a participant and managing director of Pa Dawooda Enterprise under Gam Brick Fab, thanked GiEPA for organizing such an important forum by bringing all stakeholders together to clear their doubts and make them better understand the GiEPA Act, how to maximise their SIC and GiEPA’s role in assisting the private sector businesses.
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