Gambia has expressed commitment to the actualisation of the ECOWAS single currency, the Eco.
And, as part of the set macro-economic convergence criteria to assess performance, the country will continue in its efforts to meet the four primary convergency requirements – inflation, Central Bank financing of the budget and the gross reserve and one of the two secondary convergency points – exchange rate variation since 2017, minister for finance and economic affairs Mambury Njie informed lawmakers in Banjul.
The Gambia, he said, has met other criteria but is missing on the budget deficit under the primary convergence criteria and debt to GDP ratio under the secondary convergence criteria.
“Yet this has placed The Gambia amongst the best performing countries towards the regional integration process of the single currency,” Njie stated, noting that the coming of the Eco would significantly help Gambia, a country with limited resources, in its regional integration process.
He also informed deputies that the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) is progressing, and so far a total of $199.57 million has been disbursed towards the implementation of the NDP, representing a 12% disbursement rate of the pledged amount.
In June, President Adama Barrow had, at a virtual meeting organised for member-states of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), given similar assurances to his colleague Heads of State and Government.
The Gambian leader said the ECOWAS Authority has made progress on the proposed introduction of the ECOWAS single currency.
“There is need, therefore, to review these decisions in line with Article 15 of the 48th Ordinary session of the Authority of the Heads of States and Governments of 16th December 2015,” Barrow told the meeting, attended by Presidents of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria.
The Gambian President urged the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Zone to provide guidance on the crucial issue, calling for a review of the parallel monetary programmes in the West Africa sub region.
“I will emphasise here that The Gambia remains committed to the revised roadmap of the ECOWAS Monetary Cooperation Programme. This commitment has been translated into sustained improvements on achieving the set of macroeconomic convergence criteria,” he said.
Since 2017, The Gambia has constantly achieved three of the four primary convergence criteria, missing only the Budget deficit criterion. Similarly, on the secondary convergence criteria, The Gambia has consistently achieved one of the two criteria, missing the public debt-GDP ratio.
Decisions have been made already on the name and symbol of the future currency; the exchange rate regime, the monetary policy framework, the model Central Bank, and the name of the common Central Bank.
However, the West Africa Monetary Zone Convergence Council wrote to the ECOWAS Commission to “constructively engage” both the ECOWAS Commission and West African Economic and Monetary Union Member (UEMOA) states on issues of concern to the zone’s convergence council in respect of the single currency programme. The UEMOA states had announced on December 21, 2019 that it was replacing its currency, the CFA franc with a new currency, the Eco which was to be introduced end-June 2020. The WAMZ protested over that, calling the move unilateral, given that the two zones had agreed on the Eco as the common currency for both sides. The UEMOA states held back rolling out the Eco end-June as proposed.