(AfDB) - On Tuesday 3 October, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group, meeting in Abidjan, approved a grant of $6.72 million to The Gambia to support implementation of the first phase of the Public Financial Management and Economic Reform Programme.

The Bank's financial support comes under Pillar 1 of the Transition Support Facility, which is intended for states affected by situations of fragility or conflict.

The programme's goal is to improve governance and fiscal resilience in The Gambia, by supporting public financial management reforms and strengthening social protection systems to reduce the poverty that affects vulnerable populations.

The programme will support reforms on through participatory budgeting, including climate budget earmarking, transparent procurement, effective financial reporting and improved external auditing and parliamentary oversight of budget management.

Th program also focuses on the mobilization of domestic resources and on debt management. The programme provides for strengthening prudent and transparent debt management and accelerating domestic resource mobilization with a focus on consolidating progress in revenue administration.

The program  will also strengthen governance, especially the legal and regulatory frameworks of the of the government nascent social protection system. The objective is to support the establishment of an inclusive and well-targeted system, while at the same time developing a framework for extending social protection coverage.

These reforms will improve the mobilization of revenues linked to essential fiscal sources, including customs revenues (expected to increase by 11%) over the life of the programme. The poverty rate is expected to decline from 53% to 48%.

As of 30 June 2023, the African Development Bank Group's active portfolio in The Gambia comprised 13 projects with a total value of $200.83 million. The transport sector accounted for 60.3% of the portfolio, followed by agriculture (16.7%), energy (11%), water and sanitation (9%) and governance (3%).