By pursuing the controversial Mamamah Airport project, Sierra Leone is not going against the advice of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Samura Kamara, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, has said.
In an apparent response to a report carried by Politico, Kamara said in an interview in China that the government was working “closely” with the international lenders over the issue.
The Mamamah Airpoty is the government’s response to a horde of difficulties associated with the Lungi International Airport which has been partly blamed for affecting negatively the country’s tourism sector. The new airport is planned to be constructed in the village of Mamamah in the north of the country, just outside Freetown. The Chinese government had agreed to fund the project through loan, costing the Sierra Leonean tax payer US$320M.
The World Bank and IMF, which are major donors to Sierra Leone, say the project cannot be a priority at the moment, especially given that Sierra Leone was only emerging from the devastating Ebola epidemic which adversely affected its economy.
World Bank officials have particularly spoken strongly against the country going along with the project. Despite that expressed opposition, however, the government has severally expressed the point that it wanted to go ahead.
And earlier this month the strongest indication yet that the project will be implemented came from President Ernest Bai Koroma himself. He told a visiting Chinese delegation in Freetown that his government was still committed to the project. That same week Foreign Minister Kamara flew to Beijing where he met with Chinese officials, including his counterpart Wang Yi. Their discussion, according to reports, touched on a range of issues, at the top of which was the Mamamah Airport.
Kamara said in an interview with the Information and Press Attaché at the Sierra Leone embassy in Beijing that to his government Mamamah was “very important” as it had “great potentials” for the country's future growth.
"President Koroma has not hidden the fact that the project holds the future of Sierra Leone," he stated.
"It is our responsibility to make sure that the project now starts but for the project to start, we have to agree on financing with China," Kamara added.
"The initial loan provided by the Chinese was not concessional, that is, it did not meet the 31% grant elements…based on Sierra Leone's debt sustainability analysis, we have to negotiate to make the loan concessional at the minimum level and we achieved that objective."
A major concern for the Bretton Woods institutions has been Sierra Leone’s ability to repay the loan with which the airport is to be constructed. According to reports, the country has seven years to repay what is equivalent to 11 percent of its Gross Domestic Product, according to an Africa Confidential report last year.
Foreign Minister Samura Kamara, in his interview with John Baimba Sesay, acknowledged this and that this was been taken care of in the negotiation. "We have negotiated for the loan to be as concessional as possible, so as not to undermine our ability to repay after the grace period," he said.
Kamara also said Sierra Leone’s development partners, like the IMF and World Bank, had a duty to "help us borrow prudently as a country." The minister said that the construction work on the airport was supposed to have commenced before the end of 2016 and should be in advanced stage before the end of President Koroma’s term, which is at the end of 2018.
(C) Politico 21/06/16
