Claim: Tax revenue has increased by over 100% since 2017

Source: President Adama Barrow

Verdict: FALSE

President Adama Barrow in a recent interview on the State of Affairs television programme on QTV, claimed tax collection by Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA) has increased under his administrations by over 100%.

The Gambia is gearing up for Presidential elections in December, a crucial democratic exercise for citizens to pass verdict on the current administration that took over the mantle of governance after years of dictatorship in 2017.

President Barrow ahead of the election continues to defend the performance of his administration and is touting his achievements.

But how true is this claim?

Claim:

“Today, our (Tax) collection have increased by 100%. We were collecting about 500 million a month. We are now collecting a billion— more than a billion. So, it have (sic) increased by 100% plus,” the President claimed during the recent interview.

Fact-check

To verify the claim made by the President, we need to establish how much the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA) has been collecting in tax revenue since the current administration took over the reins of government starting in 2017.

Available data from the GRA shows the Authority started collecting a little over D 500 million a month since 2014.

Tax collection has increased from D7.8 billion in 2016 to 11.8 billion under President Adama Barrow.

This means that the tax collection from 2016 to 2020 increased by about 50% and not 100% plus as suggested by the President.

Verdict

The claim by the President is exaggerated and false.

Researched by Mustapha K Darboe

Update: On August 11, the director of press and public relations at the State House, Amie Bojang, sent Malagen a response, stating that figures quoted by the President were from his briefing with the Economic Council.

“The GRA collection this year stands on the average of a billion per month. However, some months we do collection over D1.2 billion for example in the month of March 2021 and July 2021 the collections were over D 1.2 billion,” Bojang quoted the Economic Council to have said.

But this does not affect our verdict. The information used by Malagen are the tax collection records of GRA verified to be correct by the institution’s press office prior to our publication.