U.S. Embassy Banjul Political Economic Section FY 2017 Fiscal

  The U.S. Embassy Banjul / Bureau of Economic Affairs of the U.S. Department of State announces an open competition for organizations to submit applications to carry out a program to support government and civil society organization efforts to enhance budget transparency, advance best practices in public financial management and improve the transparency of natural resource management.

Program Objectives: [A1]  

There are four objectives to this project.  Progress in each of the objective areas would signify success.  Awards can include a relatively short pre-program research and information-gathering period.   

1)      Complete Budgets: Train Gambian government officials to ensure that budget documents are complete, with detailed information on allocations.  Budgets should include expenditures broken down by ministry and revenues broken down by source and type.  Budgets should incorporate all special accounts or funds.  Budgets should include significant cash or non-cash resources, including foreign aid.  Budgets should detail allocations to and earnings from state-owned enterprises.

2)      Public Budgets: Work with Gambian government officials to make budget documents publically available.  Specifically, the executive budget proposal, enacted budget, and end-of-year reports in full should be accessible to the public.  Complete information on debt obligations should also be published.  The preference is to have budget and other information online or in hard copy from government offices or libraries. 

3)      Audits: Work with the supreme audit institution to publish audit reports within a reasonable period of time.

4)      Natural Resource Extraction: Work with Gambian government officials to specify law or regulation on the procedures and criteria for awarding natural resource extraction contracts and licenses and make information about natural resource extraction awards publicly available.