Opinion: Economic intelligence: Surveillance, mystery shopping and processing

Health and taxation must be revisited with vigour and determination to investigate, track then sanction.

1 - I totally agree with the directive given by the state for the police to investigate the body or bodies behind the issuing of pharmacy licenses in The Gambia. Investigations should without doubt  unearth the causes as we are already sniffing the effects within woes and misery. Accessing data bases bearing details related to who is issued, who issues and who imports medicine from abroad into The Gambia MUST be part of the said task from day one.  Actors within these indexed "syndicates" must be compelled to respect the laws of the land!  Our citizens should equally be compelled by need not greed or consequences after being victimised, to see essence in standing up to protects one's national interest. Next we should collectively understand and respect the raison d'etre behind establishing a "pharmacy data base" versus "criminal records data base".

All of it would then end up in putting in place a reliable citizens data base.  Names and details entered therein would then be identified and located to see who is Gambian and not Gambian. Who is a person of interest and a victim.

Of course not all Gambians are clean  either therefore next would be to pursue  any trace or link between those Gambians within the above referenced bodies and "syndicates" they represent in both the health industry and other institutions within our  nation. That will broaden the investigations which of course needed at this time. First on the list of "suspects" should be Gambian doctors, nurses and pharmacy owners with questionable characters! Findings can indeed determine whose character is questionable or not! Where any party is found to be a menace to the health of the citizenry, he/ she or they should be charged, tried then sanctioned. Licenses that are found to be offshoots of anything dubious must be revoked. Those who issue these licenses and are called doctors or health experts should also be banned from being medical practitioners in The Gambia  for life.

2 - On the leg of taxation.

Formally Gambia used to have a unit from customs and excise doing what they called door to door, house to house and shop to shop survey. Latter was meant to detect who avoids and evades tax. The two maybe similar in context and concept but "legally different". Arguably, avoiding tax can be "slippery"  because the offender could be free due to complex legal technicalities. Whereas tax evasion is more serious and should attract heavy fines up to jail time. Where it is a foreigner who commits the offence he or she should be sanctioned then expelled out of The Gambia after being fined or serving his or her jail time. Further down the line and

technically speaking there is  municipal tax and  national tax.  These two always go side by side in any nation. Honestly speaking in The Gambia municipalities are more active when it comes to levying taxes on SMEs and or local vendors. Although the question that remains is how do they use what is collected?!

State agents must redouble their efforts on this now not later by making taxes are paid and those paying the taxes are doing so legally as blindly collecting money without knowing the payee is may also compromise the Image of our  nation as AML must be taken into  consideration.  Once they do it can be added measures against foreigners who come here buy land, own shops, stores, super markets etc yet avoid and worst of all evade tax at the same time. Same should go for citizens who evade or avoid tax. How do they succeed in avoiding tax or evading it? Question cannot be answered where GRA is not put to TEST or put on the scales of checks and balances too.

Landlords especially foreigners who own places within the Gambia must also face stiff laws as far as taxes on what they earn from those rents!

My analysis are indeed stemming from economic intelligence processing after months of surveillance with mystery shoppers deployed to gather facts.

It is the duty of everyone to help calibrate matters especially where much is left to be desired.