The Organisation of Islamic Conference-The Gambia has secured 300 hundred million dollars of Saudi funding for the implementation of infrastructure projects in The Gambia.

Yankuba Dibba, OIC chief for THE Gambia told reporters at a news conference held at the International Conference Centre in Bijilo yesterday.

“Largely, I almost don’t want to run into percentages but I can say over three-quarter of our funding comes from Saudi Arabia. In any developing project, when we conceptualise the OIC project, I mean the entire gamut of what we have to do.

“From the outset we have envisaged that we would need an envelope of at least 500 million dollars and this was a rough estimate of all what we wanted to do, but like in any planning process, you kind of base on realities and narrow down on the availability of funds,” he said.

“Currently, under our belt we can proudly say we have secured three hundred million dollars in terms of our projects and if I can give a quick rundown of those projects, they are mainly five.  

“Project number one which is the 50 kilometres urban roads, this is 50 million dollars and is entirely funded by the Saudis. We also have VBIP at the airport which is 10.2 million dollars and this also is hundred percent funded by the Saudis. 

“Then we go on to the Bertil harding highway which is 79 million dollars but that’s co-funded by the Arab Bank for Development in Africa. 

“Then we have the Saudi intervening in the area of water and electricity which is a 32.5 million dollars total grant to the Gambia government.”

“We have a last project which is our hotel project which is a 100 million project and in terms of funding patterns that’s a big difference compared to the rest of the projects because that’s a public-private partnership which is a consensus agreement between the Gambian Government and private enterprise,” he added.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba

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