Mousa Gibril Bala Gaye, the secretary of state for Finance and Economic Affairs, confirmed before the National Assembly members that marketing of the Gambia Groundnut Cooperation (GGC), as indicated in this year's budget speech, was put under a management contract by July 2008.

SOS Gaye made this disclosure on Monday, while responding to concerns raised by   Sedia Jatta, NAM for Wuli West Constituency, during the start of the debate on the 2008 budget speech.

According to him, this was one of the conditions agreed with the World Bank, though the World Bank and others observed that it would be difficult to put GGC into a management contract by the target year. He said there were steps that were necessary to be taken. He said groundnut marketing is a very sensitive issue, and that government has lost considerable sums of money in it.

"Over the years, government has provided crop financing operators and they have failed woefully in retiring crop financing," he said. The Finance and Economic Affairs boss further clarified that some changes had been done in the marketing arrangements of the trade season, adding that the senior management had been sanctioned, thus resulting in the creation of the post of managing director, deputy managing director and director of finance.

"The new GGC management, after reviewing the past operation of the cooperation, feels that it is better and safer for them to deal with the Cooperative Produce Marketing Society (CPMS)" he said.

According to him, over D27 million have been disbursed among the current groundnut buying point (Seccos). He added that another D10 million will be disbursed this week to increase the opening of more buying points. He then expressed hope that this year's groundnut trade season would be far better than the previous years.