The National Assembly in collaboration with the UNDP, ActionAid and the Pro-Poor Advocacy Group (Pro-PAG), last Friday organised a two-day workshop on pro-poor budgeting in the three social priority sectors - agriculture, health and education - held at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi.

Speaking at the forum, the speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Elizabeth FY Renner, expressed sincere appreciation and gratitude for the invaluable role played by Pro-PAG and UNDP over the years in building the capacity of NAMs on pro-poor budgeting. She said they are also assembled for yet another annual retreat on the 2010 draft budget estimates of the government of the Republic of The Gambia for the period of 1st January to 31st December 2010, which have recently been tabled before the parliament and debated on by parliamentarians. "Furthermore, the process of budgeting has itself, evolved from being an imperial instrument of control and exploitation, and of social and political exclusion to the current best practice of programme budgeting," she remarked.

The Gambia, she said, under the visionary leadership of His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr Yahya AJJ Jammeh is committed to the achievement of best practices in all spheres of the political, social and financial sectors as a demonstration of good governance. This, Speaker Renner went on, is evident in the abundant political goodwill and financial support enjoyed by the National Assembly since the Second Republic, especially over the past 10 years. "Programme budgeting by its very nature, is more detailed and simpler to construct than to interpret.

The new best practice is also more accountable and makes it easier to track public expenditure on the priority social sectors of education, health and agriculture. It can easily also enable us assess and ascertain the required resource, vis-a-vis the available resources and funding gaps for all sectors, including that of internal human security with a view to guaranteeing the fundamental social and economic freedom of all those whom God has committed to our charge," she remarked.

Speaker Renner noted that the result of this executive and presidential resolve has been fruitful for instance; the allocation of resources to parliament over the last ten years grew by almost ten folds, from over 3 million dalasi at the dawn of the Second Republic to over D30 million for 2010. "Also for the first time in our history, all public enterprises and agencies are now being made socially and financially accountable to the taxpayers through parliament. And the president's clarion call "operation no compromise" with regards to public services is being re-enforced by lawful parliamentary oversight and scouting," she said.

For his part, the deputy speaker of National Assembly, Hon. Abdoulie Bojang, described the workshop as very important, as it is meant to capacitise the national budget in terms of pro-poor budgeting especially in the key priority sectors of agriculture, health and education. For the first time also, he noted, they have heard NGO perspective in terms of pro-poor budgeting.

Hon Bojang also expressed sincere gratitude and appreciation to their development partners; ie, the UNDP, Pro-PAG, ActionAid The Gambia, among others, for their continuous support and collaboration with the National Assembly.