Page 5 - Economic transformation

The infancy of the country’s services sector is largely reflected by the fact that the

biggest services sub-industry (and the country’s biggest industry) is the wholesale and

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retail trade; and the repair of motors and motorcycles industry (See Figure 3 below) .

That said, it is an industry which is relatively labour intense and the cost of labor in the

country is very competitive, despite its low skills base. This means that the services

industry will most likely remain the main industry in the country for some time.

Figure 3: The main industries in the Gambian economy (2004 to 2017)

Besides the wholesale and retail trade, and the repairing of motors and

motorcycles; The Gambia’s economy has three other major industries. Historically the

second largest has been the crop industry/sub-sector which, at its peak, accounted for a

quarter of the GDP in 2010. The industry’s contribution has however gradually declined

to slightly over 9 percent of the GDP by 2017 (See Figure 3 above). This essentially

changed the sector’s ranking from the second to the third biggest industry in 2017.

1 The policy implications of this are briefly discussed in the chapter on economic transformation.
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