By Fatou Sillah
Chief of Staff and Minister for the Presidency, Mod K. Ceesay, has dismissed claims that the recently audited government accounts reveal missing funds, saying that critics have misunderstood the reported D110 billion discrepancy.
Speaking in an interview with West Coast Radio, Ceesay clarified that the figure does not represent unaccounted-for or stolen money but rather results from duplication and overlap in how auditors classified their findings.
“I have no problem with the word ‘discrepancy’ because that is exactly what the auditors characterized it as, but they are passing the 110 billion as if it were an unaccounted-for, missing fund and corrupt, whatever word they would use. I am saying the average envelope for the three years would be around 30 billion Dalasi, so if you multiply that by three, the overall envelope would be somewhere around ninety billion,” Ceesay said.
According to Ceesay, the D110 billion figure reflects audit methodology, where certain findings—such as missing documentation, procurement breaches, unaccounted funds, and unreconciled balances—were repeated under different categories, leading to inflated totals.
“Those were the numbers identified from 2021 to 2023 and put together. If a cluster falls on the missing item or missing documentation, they will also reappear on the procurement breaches and unreconciled numbers. If you do a general lumping and counting, then you will be doing some duplications,” he said.
Ceesay further urged analysts to assess the audit results in context, noting that the reports show steady improvements in public financial management over the three-year period.
“When you do analysis, especially for audit findings, you have to look at what the situation was in 2021 and what it is now. You would significantly realize that there is actually improvement in public financial management from 2021 to 2023; any serious analyst shouldn’t fail to see that,” he said.
He acknowledged that the audit concluded the government accounts did not “truly and fairly represent” the state of affairs, describing it as a qualified audit—a classification that, he said, has been consistent throughout The Gambia’s post-independence history.
“Since Gambia’s independence, all government accounts have always remained qualified audits, but what we are saying is, what are the improvements? There are improvements that have been registered year by year,” he said.
Ceesay noted that The Gambia’s debt-to-GDP ratio, currently around 70 percent, has seen a significant decline compared to previous years.
He also dismissed claims of hidden debts, describing them as misinformed comparisons with Senegal’s financial system. According to him, the D3.9 billion referred to as hidden debt is, in fact, money owed to the government, not to external creditors.
“Those borrowings are already consolidated as part of central government debt and are part of the 70 percent already counted of GDP. It is not different, it is not isolated, it is not hidden; none of that is true,“ Ceesay explained.