Publication: The Gambia Economic Update, Spring 2024: Jumpstarting Inclusive and Sustained Growth
Loading...
Date
2024-05-29
ISSN
Published
2024-05-29
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Jumpstarting sustained and inclusive growth is the only way to improve the living conditions of the Gambians. Heightened global and regional uncertainties coupled with vulnerability climate shocks cloud the economic outlook, making efforts to improve the living conditions of the Gambians more challenging. The tightening of financing conditions has led to higher borrowing costs, exacerbating debt vulnerability although increased grants financing helped mitigate fiscal risks while supporting economic activity. The Gambia needs to maintain prudent macro-fiscal policies to build fiscal space, enhance its capacity to absorb shocks, especially in the context of the end of the debt deferral and overlapping external shocks. Fiscal consolidation efforts started in 2023 should be maintained with accelerated revenue collection measures and rationalization of public spending, while preserving much-needed public services provision, investment, and pro-poor spending. Structural issues such as reliance on low-value added tourism, limited private sector development, and low productivity continue to affect the Gambia growth potential, calling and new growth model to enable economic opportunities for all Gambians.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2024. The Gambia Economic Update, Spring 2024: Jumpstarting Inclusive and Sustained Growth. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41611 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Regional Poverty and Inequality Update Spring 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-12)This is the April 2024 issue of the bi-annual Regional Poverty and Inequality Update for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which summarizes the main facts related to poverty and inequality in LAC using the new wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank.Publication Kenya Economic Update, June 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-14)Tight monetary policies, restrictive financial conditions, and the slowdown of global trade continued to weaken global growth. Global economic growth declined in 2023 and is expected to decline further in 2024. Although the monetary tightening in advanced economies is expected to end and the global headline inflation has reduced, policy rates are expected to only decline gradually, as core inflation has been more persistent. Commodity prices declined in 2023 and are expected to decline further in 2024. At the regional level, growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to rebound in 2024-2025 driven by a boost in private consumption from the reduction in inflation and increasing real incomes. However, tight monetary policies and fiscal consolidation efforts will keep investment and public consumption subdued in 2024 even as inflation declines. Fiscal balances are expected to improve in 2024 but external borrowing costs remain high.Publication Somalia Economic Update, Ninth Edition(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-07-08)The 9th edition of the World Bank’s Somalia Economic Update (SEU) assesses key economic developments, prospects, and policies in Somalia. The Update is intended for a wide audience including policy makers, business leaders, the community of analysts and professionals engaged in economic debate, and the public. This SEU addresses climate change challenges for economic growth. It highlights the urgent need of the Government of Somalia to support sustained and long-term growth, anchored on macroeconomic stability and broad-based structural reforms, while laying the groundwork for sustainable development and enhanced climate resilience, ensuring a more secure future for its people.Publication The Gambia Economic Update, December 2020(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12)Real GDP growth exceeded 6 percent during the two years before COVID-19 (coronavirus) struck, supported by rebounding confidence, investment, low interest rates, and growing tourism. Investment accounted for over 22 percent of GDP in 2019, three-fifths of which was private. The tourism market had weathered the collapse of Thomas Cook UK and expanded into new markets. Industry was the fastest-growing sector in 2019, partly due to the issuance of oil-prospecting licenses, but also due to strong investment in construction fueled by remittances from the diaspora. On the other hand, agriculture had contracted, affected by erratic rainfall and the late supply of inputs. Tourism arrivals had started the year in line with 2019 but collapsed by 50 percent in March and are expected to fall by 63 percent in 2020. However, official remittances grew at record pace in the second quarter, perhaps due to travel restrictions closing informal channels. Favorable rainfall, good access to inputs, and few pest outbreaks bode well for agriculture. It registered the lowest fiscal deficit since 2009 and a primary surplus after 2009. This came despite increased expenditure, as revenues rose due to increased excises and levies and improved revenue administration capacity. Both budget and project grants also increased. The Government continues to make large transfers to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), however, the fiscal burden of which is estimated to be around 6 percent of 2019 GDP. Pressures from COVID-19 saw the deficit rise in the first half of 2020 although the tax authorities still managed to exceed their revised collection targets. Tax exemptions, although declining, continue to be sizeable-without discretionary exemptions, the deficit in the first half of 2020 would have been reduced by 0.7 percent of GDP. Non-tax revenue has been boosted by one-off items such as the sale of assets, which partly compensated for the tax decline. The Government initially responded to pandemic-related spending pressures through budgetary reallocation. In July, the National Assembly passed a supplementary bill aimed at providing further relief and stimulating recovery.Publication Syria Economic Monitor, Spring 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-28)This Syria Economic Monitor leverages innovative alternative and remote-based data sources to analyze recent economic developments in a nation still grappling with the most deadly and one of the most protracted conflicts in recent history. Throughout 2023, Syria’s dire economic situation continued to worsen, exacerbated by multiple overlapping shocks, including the February earthquakes, and increased fighting since September, which brought annual fatalities to a four-year high and triggered a fresh wave of internal displacement. Furthermore, the Middle East conflict has spilled over Syria’s borders, marked by repeated Israeli airstrikes since October 2023, resulting in fatalities and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure. The report also provides an assessment of the captagon trade in Syria, which may have become the most valuable sector of the country’s economy. Syria’s protracted economic contraction is forecast to persist in 2024 due to a multitude of challenges stemming from conflicts both within Syria and across the region.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16)A growing literature attributes gender inequality in labor market outcomes in part to the reduction in female labor supply after childbirth, the child penalty. However, if social norms constrain married women’s activities outside the home, then marriage can independently reduce employment, even in the absence childbearing. Given the correlation in timing between childbirth and marriage, conventional estimates of child penalties will conflate these two effects. The paper studies the marriage penalty in South Asia, a context featuring conservative gender norms and low female labor force participation. The study introduces a split-sample, pseudo-panel approach that allows for the separation of marriage and child penalties even in the absence of individual-level panel data. Marriage reduces women’s labor force participation in South Asia by 12 percentage points, whereas the marginal penalty of childbearing is small. Consistent with the central roles of both opportunity costs and social norms, the marriage penalty is smaller among cohorts with higher education and less conservative gender attitudes.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.Publication South Asia Development Update, April 2024: Jobs for Resilience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-02)South Asia is expected to continue to be the fastest-growing emerging market and developing economy (EMDE) region over the next two years. This is largely thanks to robust growth in India, but growth is also expected to pick up in most other South Asian economies. However, growth in the near-term is more reliant on the public sector than elsewhere, whereas private investment, in particular, continues to be weak. Efforts to rein in elevated debt, borrowing costs, and fiscal deficits may eventually weigh on growth and limit governments' ability to respond to increasingly frequent climate shocks. Yet, the provision of public goods is among the most effective strategies for climate adaptation. This is especially the case for households and farms, which tend to rely on shifting their efforts to non-agricultural jobs. These strategies are less effective forms of climate adaptation, in part because opportunities to move out of agriculture are limited by the region’s below-average employment ratios in the non-agricultural sector and for women. Because employment growth is falling short of working-age population growth, the region fails to fully capitalize on its demographic dividend. Vibrant, competitive firms are key to unlocking the demographic dividend, robust private investment, and workers’ ability to move out of agriculture. A range of policies could spur firm growth, including improved business climates and institutions, the removal of financial sector restrictions, and greater openness to trade and capital flows.Publication Economic Recovery(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-06)World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about the world facing major challenges, including COVID, climate change, rising poverty and inequality and growing fragility and violence in many countries. He highlighted vaccines, working closely with Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, the World Bank has conducted over one hundred capacity assessments, many even more before vaccines were available. The World Bank Group worked to achieve a debt service suspension initiative and increased transparency in debt contracts at developing countries. The World Bank Group is finalizing a new climate change action plan, which includes a big step up in financing, building on their record climate financing over the past two years. He noted big challenges to bring all together to achieve GRID: green, resilient, and inclusive development. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, mentioned focusing on vulnerable people during the pandemic. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, focused on giving everyone a fair shot during a sustainable recovery. All three commented on the importance of tackling climate change.Publication Remarks at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-12)World Bank Group President David Malpass discussed biodiversity and climate change being closely interlinked, with terrestrial and marine ecosystems serving as critically important carbon sinks. At the same time climate change acts as a direct driver of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss. The World Bank has financed biodiversity conservation around the world, including over 116 million hectares of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas, 10 million hectares of Terrestrial Protected Areas, and over 300 protected habitats, biological buffer zones and reserves. The COVID pandemic, biodiversity loss, climate change are all reminders of how connected we are. The recovery from this pandemic is an opportunity to put in place more effective policies, institutions, and resources to address biodiversity loss.