By Alfred Bia Koroma

There is no gainsaying that Sierra Leone’s economy is completely sick and almost at the point of ‘death’ for obvious reasons, and only excellent expert economic doctors including but not limited to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and others can rejuvenate it as they used to do even though at the peril of the poor.

These major international financial institutions like in normal life, normally diagnose the problems first before making prescription for treatment.

Of course, IMF for one will never salvage a country’s economic predicament without prescribing certain steps or conditionalities as they are known to take. Such conditions most times have adverse effect on governments and their people especially in underdeveloped nations like ours.

But why do these emerging economies always accept these ‘harsh’ conditionlities? The blatant reality is because most of these countries’ economies are foreign driven, and like a drowning person, have to accept any condition to survive.

The only thing that can get a country out of such quagmire is to find an internal solution to its own problems including aggressive fight against graft, increases production and exportation and stop total dependence on outside help.

Many a time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for instance, forces governments to make an increase on certain commodities like fuel and rice widely regarded in country like Sierra Leone as political commodities as precondition for its intervention.

Candidly, in a situation like ours where the government is yet to take four months in office, such precondition is regarded as a very bitter pill for us to swallow, given that the poor nation is yet to come to terms with the effect of the twin natural disasters, Ebola and the Covid-19 pandemic which impact cannot be overemphasized.

Considering these harsh realities, and the need for an immediate deliverance, Sierra Leone has no alternative but to accede to these IMF conditionalities.

Any attempt to disagree, the resultant effect will be instant price increase of fuel which often triggers the increase in price of other commodities.

It’s against this backdrop that the government has to find an alternative not necessarily to void the IMF, but importantly to stop overdependence on the Fund to address the pressing problems of the suffering masses.

But as a very poor tiny country like Sierra Leone with a minute population of approximately eight million people, only God will help us to see the light of the day.