By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Minister of Finance, Jacob Jusu Saffa, has on Friday 6th December launched the 2018 Economic Bulletin at the Ministry’s conference hall in Freetown.
The document, according to officials of the ministry, is a product of joint work of the Macro-Fiscal and Research Delivery divisions of the ministry and it is its flagship report which offer an in-depth overview of the main economic development in the year under review. It looks at the development in the real, external, fiscal monetary and financial sectors of the Sierra Leonean economy.
The report comprises feature articles presented by Sierra Leonean researchers in both government and the private sector. The articles delve into diverse economic topics that are relevant to Sierra Leone’s policy debate. These include micro structure analysis of exchange rate dynamics, an opinion piece on Sierra Leone’s reliance on external debt, an estimation of external flight and its effect of the Sierra Leonean economy and an appraisal of tax efficiency in other West African countries.
The purpose of these articles, according to Saffa, is to increase the research capabilities of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), enhance collaborative and data sharing efforts among MDAs, offer a widely visible publication outlet to up and coming researchers and deepen the understanding of the important economic policy issues facing Sierra Leone.
In his statement, Minister Saffa noted that when he was in opposition, he advocated a lot for issues of bread and butter in Sierra Leone and he said he was not surprised that whenever he faced a media panel for interview now as a minister the question of how to address the bread and butter issues kept popping up.
“When I was in opposition that was my language I used to the then government about anything they said. But it’s all about those early discourse. If you take micro policies, how does micro policies get transmitted into macro; there is a middle level layer which talks about infractstructre, the credit market and probably the labour market. That transmission mechanism from which policies get transmitted from the upper level to the lower level takes time and normally there is lap period. A lot of barriers along the way. So our challenge is that which policies can we have as a government that will impact very fast on the lives of the common man. That is our challenge,” he stated.
Saffa added that this is all the reason why this year’s theme of the report is Fiscal Consolidation for Job Creation and Human Capital Development.
“I still maintain that bread and butter is in the job. Bread we have, but to have the butter you must get a job. If you have a job you don’t care about inflation,” he emphasised.
Minister Saffa stressed that at the centre of every financial policy should be research.
“Sometimes we come up with policies without analysis. My instinct is that before every Finance Act, we should have been able to do some analysis no matter how rudimentary the change it has on the fiscal situation. I think we can do better. Not that we are bad, but I think we can deepen the discourse. We can make it better, we can make it probably more right if we can back it up, if we are informed by results and evidence. So that’s really where I’m coming from,” he said.
Gayle Martin, World Bank Country Manager, admonished the Finance Ministry to review its communication strategy and to think through the messages so that the people can understand the technical language.
As part of efforts to increase the use of evidence in economic policy formulation and implementation, the Ministry of Finance through its research and delivery division, has embarked on collaborative activity to increase its research capacity and has therefore called for papers and research proposals from interested researchers from the government, private researchers, and academics for the 2019 Economic Bulletin on the theme: Macro Economic Policy and the labour market.
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