By Hassan I. Conteh

“With E-Government Platforms, more savings, less fuel and paper buying will be reduced,” says Abubakarr Tarawallie, Budget Advocacy Network’s coordinator in Sierra Leone.

“Because of lack of donor data reporting, we could have scored an A, B or C but we couldn’t. We only scored a D grade and it is considered as the least score in the area data reporting on expenditure.”

Government’s failure is simply because data is lacking in most government’s revenue sectors as we carried our study, BAN’s coordinator said.

National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT) information on social security contributions must be made available always, senior officials at BAN recommended in a meeting organized last week at a launching ceremony of the CSO’s two prominent reports presented at Freetown’s City Hall.

That program was attended by a number of CSOs, the media, finance ministry, Action Aid, IMF country representative in Sierra Leone, and NRA, etc.

The two reports were entitled: Budget Credibility Report and Domestic Revenue Expenditure Analysis.

In the case of NASSIT, it is hoped that retirees would be able to get what they had saved as pensions while government also stands to benefit a lot from most donor partners if data on social protection schemes are always made available online when needed.

With reliable data on display on NASSIT’s website, confidence is reposed on the institution in the eyes of the CSOs, the media, the public, donor partners and beneficiaries of NASSIT.

BAN is of the view that with the establishment of more “digital data systems”, a credible and a transparent data reporting process is assured and NGOs and civil society bodies can do their research work best without a hindrance.

And, by so doing, the general public would have the chance to assess and make informed perspectives on the data seen on state institutions’ websites.

The leading CSO on State’s budget, BAN, acknowledged the effort of National Revenue Authority for leading the way on “digital revenue” mobilization over the years.

It urged the main tax collector in the country to robustly implement E-government platforms, digital tax systems and to improve on its property tax collection drive.

It reported that NRA collected Le 1.1 bn since January to September 2023 in order to meet its annual targets set by the government.

But, BAN cautioned government to minimize extra-budgetary expenditure to MDAs and to cut down the rate of government official travelling.

“The budget debt keeps increasing, and government must not spend above 2% of our non-extractive revenue for the year….”

From the supplementary budget of le 18.6 bn proposed by government recently this year, Le 12.5 bn has been spent just months after the June24 elections to September. It means, according to BAN, only Le 6bn is left for government to use for October and December, 2023.

The report is important because as people of Sierra Leone we would like to know what comes out from our domestic revenue sources.

It said about twenty ministries were found by BAN’s latest report to have collected more money from government’s budgets of 2020, 2021 and 2022, something which caused the work of local government councils to be paralyzed over the years, Mr. Tarawally observed.

For example, BAN’s Domestic Revenue and Expenditure Analysis Report of Novemeber 9, 2023 indicated that agriculture crop-division alone was budgeted for Le 3.5 bn (old leones ) but Le 344.5 million was only utilized, giving an execution rate of 9.8 %.

This means a whooping sum of money couldn’t be accounted for in the year 2021.

In that same year, healthcare had a budget of Le 13.1 billion (old leones) but only 1.1 billion was used.

“More money was spent on MDAs; we are looking for more service delivery programs than spending money on few MDAs alone,” BAN’s official says.

These latest shocking revelations, by the civil society on government budget planning and spending, have raised several eyebrows among citizens.

Most Sierra Leoneans, ordinary people and political figures, have vented out their strong disapproval of government mismanagement of State’s public funds over the years and even on the continuous “overseas travel” by public officials.

The people are condemning government’s new stance to bring into existence a new Finance Act of 2024 which will see, next year, sharp increases on the cost of rice commodity and other valuable building materials sold in the country.

While a five percent (5%) tax will be added on rice imported into the country, fifteen percent (10%) on iron rod and a twenty percent (20% ) on cement against January next year.

Instead of heavy taxes being imposed on goods and materials to become too expensive for poor Sierra Leoneans, most people have advised for a limit on government incessant travelling of public officials out of the country which often results to waste of millions of Leones.

And, instead of an imposition of heavy taxes on local and foreign investors in the country, some right -minded  Sierra Leoneans have asked the Bio’s led Sierra Leone People’s government to “de-stretch” or reduce the  wage bill by minimizing plenty of the new offices, president Julius Maada Bio has created.

They said the creation of more new public offices will render these offices to eat big into the State’s Consolidated Revenue Fund.