The Governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia, Bakay Jammeh said the domestic debt as at the end of October 2019, has increased to D33.0 billion compared to 31.1 billion in 2018. He said this yesterday during the Monetary Policy Committee meeting held at the Central Bank of The Gambia. He said this increment constitutes 37.6 and 40.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product respectively, with an increase in the stock of Treasury and Suku al-Salaam bills by 14.8 percent to 19.7 billion during the period under review. He said food inflation increased marginally by 0.1 percent to 7.3 percent in October 2019 compared to 7.2 percent in September 2019, whereas non-food inflation decelerated to 8.0 percent in October 2019 compared to 8.3 percent in September 2019, but higher than 6.8 percent recorded last year. He said: "the Gambian economy is estimated to have grown by robust 6.5 percent in 2018 compared to 4.8 percent in 29017, supported largely by the service sector, including tourism and trade, financial services and insurance, as well as transport and telecommunication". He added: "The goods account deficit is estimated at US$ 286.7 million (16.2 percent of GDP) in the first nine months of 2019, higher than the deficit of US$252.6 million(15.6 percent GDP) in the corresponding year in 2018". He said the committee noted among others the potential impact on the economy of the stock to agriculture, improvement in the current account of the balance of payments, deceleration in inflation, strong in the banking sector and comfortable level of the international reserves of the bank. He said in view of this, the committee decided to maintain the policy rate at 12.5 percent, maintain the interest on standing deposit facility at 2.5 percent and the standing lending at 13.5 percent. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/newscast-africa/support