By Alpha Abu
The Government of Sierra Leone is expected to fetch a whopping US$ 54, 22,750.000 as total revenue so far from the export of timber, since it approved Leadway Company as the sole agent for the management and exporting of the logs.
This revenue falls within the period the company got its first mandate from the government in June 2018 and a renewed agreement in February 2020.
Leadway Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Babadi Kamara announced the figures whilst updating journalists on his company’s activities at a press briefing in Freetown.
Giving a breakdown of the transactions, Kamara said 13,000 container-load of timber got shipped out initially upon Leadway taking charge in 2018 which generated the sum of $37,140,000 that was subsequently paid into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
He said that Leadway was in the process of exporting 5,995 container-loaded 20-ft containers which would earn the government and additional $17,085,750, under the second agreement.
Kamara also told journalists that Leadway has apportioned the sum of $ 6,738,250 from the total timber revenue, to the government’s Reforestation programme and honoring of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species or CITES, a multilateral agreement protecting threatened flora and animals.
The Leadway boss was however quick to debunk what he referred to as ‘’false and malicious media reporting” that his company was incapable of handling tree planting and had therefore not done such since contracted by government for the timber business. He denied any involvement in tree-planting and said best practice frowned at one institution collecting revenue and at the same time supervising expending of the very funds. “My responsibility is to collect and pay to government monies allocated to Afforestation and CITES which I have done in an unprecedented manner”, Kamara said, emphatically. He said the revenue Leadway collected for tree planting in just two years for the government was a feat yet to be achieved, even by all the previous timber license holders put together.
According to the businessman, the Timber Review Committee set up by this current government found out that the unregulated and proliferation of timber export licences corrupted the system to an extent that the state did not realize the much-needed revenue in the previous government, as the whole business was fraught with malpractice. Leadway’s sole agency for timber export was as a result of recommendation by the Committee, Kamara explained.
He pointed out that there was every reason to trust the process as it had “helped government realize much needed revenue from the timber trade”.
The CEO dispelled claims that the trade was being monoplised and said every Sierra Leonean was free to go into the timber business.
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