The US State Department has named Sierra Leone among six countries in West Africa to have met the minimum requirements of fiscal transparency for 2019.
The annual global Fiscal Transparency Report takes into account countries that have “key budget documents that are publicly available, substantially complete, and generally reliable”.
The review also considers “an assessment of the transparency of processes for awarding government contracts and licenses for natural resource extraction.”
It is an annual exercise aimed at a review of the “fiscal transparency of governments that receive U.S. assistance” and helps “ensure U.S. taxpayer funds are used appropriately”.
This is part of an assessment of 141 governments from January to December 2018 which considered “information from U.S. embassies and consulates, other U.S. government agencies, international organizations, and civil society organizations”
They were assessed based on the fact that a country’s national budget was documented in a way that included receipts and expenditures by ministry, as well as government contracts and licenses for natural resource extraction including the practice of bidding and concession allocation.
The other west African countries are Ghana, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Cape Verde.
There has been no official reaction yet from the Ministry of Finance.
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