Babara Weber, the representative of the World Bank last Tuesday told stakeholders at the Ocean Bay Hotel in Bakau during the reviewing and completion of the first phase of the JAS that the AfDB and WB commitment to the second JAS will last for a period of three years.

According to her, the World Bank is expected to pump approximately US$24M between July 2012 to June 2014 and US$14 M between July 2014 to June 2015. “These are the first years of the new IDA cycle of three years based on assumption of unchanged allocation,” she added.

For the AfDB, Weber said an amount of approximately US$12M and US$4M is expected for the strategy between January 2012 and December 2014 and between January 2015 and December 2016 respectively.

She told the gathering that the first phase of the project was successful and has positively improved poverty rates, in which headcount poverty was decreased from 58% in 2003 to 48% of the population in 2010. She said it has also led to a progress in the basic education access, including sharp reduction of gender gap.

Weber further underscored that the second phase of the strategy’s proposed pillars will focus on strengthening the institutional capacity for economic governance and public service delivery, while economic growth, human capacity/social services and governance will be contributing to the Programme for Accelerated Growth and Employment (PAGE) pillars.

The deputy permanent secretary, Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Isatou Faal commended AfDB and the WB for their unflinching support to the government of The Gambia during the JAS 1 period. She said the outcome of the JAS will serve a useful purpose for the ongoing and the upcoming projects to adopt good project management strategies and outcome obstacles, adding that such strategies could help the resource envelop allocated to The Gambia particularly this year when the country is facing serious food shortage due to crop failure in the last cropping season.