Africa 24 economist correspondent
A civil society’s voice has said since the Bio’s administration continues to create more new offices, it will disrupt state’s savings from domestic revenues collected as those offices will have to be fully funded.
“Government needs to cut down on overseas travelling,” says Abubakrr Tarawally, coordinator of Budget Advocacy Network.
In a recent report, Budget Credibility Report released by BAN on Thursday 9, November, 2023, the CSO urged government of Sierra Leone, in a program attended by officials of National Revenue Authority (NRA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Action Aid, Ministry of Finance, and journalists, to institute sound strategies to ensure a speeding up of financial savings, reduction of administrative burdens and increase the effectiveness of service delivery in the country.
The CSO calls for a Centralized Travel Management Systems, Digital Tax Systems to be strengthen by NRA and to improve property tax collection to boost NRA’s annually revenue targets.
Mr. Tarawally said, during the launching of BAN’s newest dual reports on budget credibility and domestic revenue and expenditure analysis, NRA had made improved progress on revenue collection in the financial year of 2013.
“NRA collected Le 1.1 bn which is 75 percent of the domestic revenue of the initial target in all the revenue streams since January to September, 2023” the report partially reads in part.
However, this improved progress seems to have been derailed by government’s “wasteful spending” on overseas travelling by public officials.
The report also indicated that twenty ministries took more budgets from the state’s consolidated fund than other services sectors, a factor which affects key services to be enjoyed by poor Sierra Leoneans.
“In 2020, the 20 largest administrative budget heads accounted for 78.3 % of actual expenditure,” the report says.
BAN’s dual reports raise a question on the country’s latest supplementary budget which was tabled in parliament after President Julius Maada Bio secured a second five-year mandate on June 27, 2023.
The question BAN asked was: Is the Sierra Leone Budget Credible?
this question forms part of BAN’s discussion with relevant stakeholders such as government financial representatives, civil society’s activists, journalists and donor partners at Freetown’s City Hall on Thursday 9, November, 2023, ahead of Sierra Leone’s Finance Bill, 2024 which was to be discussed Friday 10.
Since several new offices are being created by Sierra Leone People’s Party’s government headed up by President Maada Bio since he assumed power, CSOs and the main opposition, All People’s Congress (APC), have not been keeping silent on the issue, seeing it as a major stumbling block that is shrinking the economy in the country.
A more critical voice has been raised by a senior politician and former head of Anti-corruption commission, Ady Macauley, he writes a twitter or X post that:
“The alternative to increasing taxes on the poor was to reduce govt expenditure which includes cutting down on the wage bill, imposing travel restrictions on public officials, put an end to the daily buying of gas….”
The Finance Act of 2024 taken to parliament on Friday 10 November, 2023, proposes a 5% increment on imported rice; 20% on cement, 10% on iron road, staring January 2024.
A group of market women in the country are also opposing the bill and the law which is about to come into effect pretty soon.
“We are going to die…we want the government to reduce the current prices on a bag of rice Le 700,000; and to cancel that tax rate; the hardship is too much on us and market sales are rather hard these days. But we know government will never listen to us, because we know for sure that they will go ahead with this new law,” they remarked.