About the AUD/GMD rate
The AUD/GMD rate is how many GMD one Australian dollar buys. It moves constantly with interest-rate expectations, commodity prices and global risk sentiment - see what moves the rate. Tradergy shows the mid-market reference rate and does not forecast where it’s heading. For the 52-week highs and lows and a daily table, see the AUD/GMD rate history.
Related views of this rate: the reverse rate, GMD → AUD, is on the receiving Gambian dalasi view, and sending Australian dollars to the Gambia is covered on the AUD → GMD transfer page. Every AUD pair sits on the convert hub, and to work in more than one currency at once there is the currency converter.
Where The Gambia's official exchange rate comes from
Every trading day the Central Bank of The Gambia collects transaction data from commercial banks, microfinance institutions, fintechs and foreign exchange bureaux, cut off at 15:00 GMT and submitted before 16:00. From that it computes one official rate: a mid-market figure, the simple average of the volume-weighted buying and selling rates, based on United States dollar transactions alone. Rates for other currencies are derived from independent sources.
The Bank publishes the method as well as the number. Its Foreign Exchange Policy of December 2023 states that the official rate is published in line with the IOSCO Principles for Financial Benchmarks, and records the discontinuation of the daily reference rate and the weekly valuation rate that the single figure replaced. The Bank describes it as an indicator for economic agents and as the figure used for government accounting and customs purposes.
The legal setting puts the regime itself beyond the Bank's gift. Section 64 of the Central Bank of The Gambia Act 2018 gives the Government, after consulting the Bank, the determination of the exchange rate regime, and provides that where the Government declares no external value for the dalasi the rates are market-determined. The Bank's policy document states that the free floating regime has been in existence since 1986 and that it does not officially target a specific exchange rate level.
There is a period the country has reason to remember. The International Monetary Fund's 2015 Article IV consultation documents a series of five exchange rate directives issued by the Office of the President between late 2012 and May 2015, each imposing a dalasi rate above prevailing market rates, issued as press releases and often accompanied by a ban on shipping foreign exchange abroad; the most recent also set ceiling rates for other major currencies. Compliance was monitored through participants' daily returns to the Bank while enforcement agents from the Office of the President watched the bureaux and unlicensed dealers. The Fund recorded interbank trade volumes falling by more than half after the May 2015 directive, with trading moving to occur discreetly above the stipulated rates. Its 2017 consultation records that the directive was rescinded.
Sources: Central Bank of The Gambia, Foreign Exchange Policy, December 2023 · International Monetary Fund, The Gambia: 2015 Article IV Consultation, Country Report No. 15/272 · International Monetary Fund, The Gambia: 2017 Article IV Consultation and First Review, Country Report No. 18/99