Speaker of the National Assembly
By Ramatoulie Jawo
The National Assembly of the Gambia today adjourned the budget debate to Thursday (24th November 2022) to allow the Finance and Public Accounts Committee to complete its report.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Fabakary Tombong Jatta, said after their retreat on 17th November, various committees of the National Assembly were engaging various ministries on budget bilaterals ahead of the main budget session and that most of the committees completed their engagements yesterday, and submitted it to FPAC.
“The Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) have to compile all the reports from various committees to table it before us this morning (Wednesday), and the time span is very short for them. It’s impossible for FPAC to complete their reports yesterday (Tuesday) to table it,” he said.
He added that it went to the extent of giving the FPAC committee extra time to finalize the report so that they could table it tomorrow (Thursday) for debate saying, “s the time span is very small, we can’t debate for two days. Instead, we are going to debate only tomorrow. So all members should be prepared,” he said.
Tombong Jatta apologized to the members and urged them to wait for the FPAC committee to finalize their report so that they can each receive a copy for tomorrow’s debate.