Kaifala Marah, Finance Minister
By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
Director of Economic Statistics at Statistics Sierra Leone has said that the Ebola outbreak has prevented the country from realising trillions of leones in 2014.
Abu Bakarr Turay yesterday told a press conference at the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone in Freetown that “in 2013 the country’s economy was projected to grow by 20.1% and that that projection would have amounted to trillions of leones in the following year”.
Turay said that it would have been a big boost for the country, but the Ebola outbreak had prevented it from achieving the projected growth.
“The Ebola epidemic is both an economic and development issue as consumption pattern has changed,” he said, adding that “it is now a matter of hand-to-mouth survival and it is a matter of seeing tomorrow.”
The economist also said that “the economy had dropped from 11.3% to 6.6% whenever movement was restricted within the state.No one expected money to flow within the state because money goes with freedom”.
Turay said the Ebola outbreak in the country had negatively affected several sectors of the economy and that it had had direct bearing on the national economy. He said agriculture and periodic marketing were among others that would be most affected.
Director of Economic Policy Reform Unit at the ministry of finance, Alimamy Bangura, said “we expect the economy to fall below 5% if the Ebola epidemic is not tackled speedily”.
He said the ministry of finance had made an initial economic projection anticipating that the Ebola outbreak would end in October.
“If the Ebola disease goes beyond October, it will be bad for this country,” Bangura warned.
(C) Politico 23/10/14
