By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
The Minister of Finance (MOF) Sheku Ahmed Fantamadi Bangura in a media interview says the country’s Wage Bill is currently sustainable and that after rebasing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the expenditure on Wages dropped.
“This means that the government should raise revenue in the system to ensure that any adjustment in Wages falls in such a sustainable level,” he said.
He said last year’s Wage Bill was as well sustainable as it recorded about 6.5% of the overall GDP. He said that through the help of the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA), they are instituting a biometric registration for the education sector to know the number of teachers and students in schools and also the number of health workers in the country and those that are receiving Wages from the government.
The minister noted that people have been raising concerns about leakages at the National Revenue Authority (NRA) which he said they are paying attention to. He added that the new NRA Boss is currently doing staffing adjustment movement of lots of people to make sure that there is limit in those leakages that exist.
He emphasized that technology is one of the ways that cut down leakages and enhance money for government, saying “once there is technology, it limits people from collecting money.” He therefore called for the introduction of a single window system which he said limits people from passing many sections as they pay to collect goods at Customs, noting that the “more people one goes through, the more incentives to do the wrong things.”
He pointed out that government has managed the economy from where it used to be, emphasizing that it is now stable with key fundamentals like the stable exchange rate and the drop in inflation. He also said that they have managed deficit within reasonable levels and that “for the past six months, they have been measuring the country on primary levels which means that our revenue matches with our expenditure.”
When asked about the country’s foreign reserve, he stated that it has dropped overtime based on the way they are servicing the economy as they provide foreign exchange for people that are importing goods into the country and also to pay external debts and manage foreign Embassies.
The Minister went on to say that in order to reduce the pressure on the foreign reserves, they are resuscitating them through international disbursement of programmes’ funds. He stated that if government participates in the mining sector and ensures that it gets revenue sharing in real mining, then the country will have “a very robust foreign reserve.”
The Ministry of Finance is mandated to formulate and implement sound economic policies and public financial management, ensure efficient allocation of public resources to promote stable economic growth and development in the context of a stable macroeconomic development.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (22/07/24)
