By Kemo Cham
The World Bank expects a wide range of reforms by the Sierra Leone government, a senior official has said.
Henry Kerali, who was recently named the Bank`s regional director overseeing its operations in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia, said they were expecting reforms in a number of areas but he singled out Energy, telecommunications and public finance management.
The official was speaking at the World Bank country office in Freetown in a meeting with a section of the media and civil society community last week. He said the way forward for Sierra Leone through improvement in its governance system, with emphasis on the need for fiscal frameworks to remain sustainable.
“In other words, expenditures should remain reasonable and revenues are efficiently collected and efficiently utilized as well,” he said, adding:
“There are several reforms we will go into but I think we will have to be fairly pragmatic and stick to what we can do one at a time.”
Kareli, a Ugandan, will be based in the Ghanaian capital Accra from where he will oversee the work of the three country offices. He replaced Gambian Yusupha Crooks whose term of office ended back in June.
Kareli takes office as the Bank prepares to unveil its next partnership agreement with Sierra Leone, which would define the lender`s support to the country in the next four years or so. This will commence with the Systematic Country Diagnostics (SCD) which will be the Bank`s view of the key challenges facing Sierra Leone and its take on what the West African country needs to address these challenges.
The World Bank says it intends to make wide range of consultations, particularly with the media and civil society.
The SCD will be followed by the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) which is expected at the end of 2016.
In all this the World Bank is refocusing its power of support to targeting the bottom, poor segment of society, which Mr Kerali said accounts for 40 percent of the population – those at the bottom of the income profile. He said the goal is to ensure that not only the well off gain from the prosperity of the nation.
The World Bank is an international multilateral lender which provides loans for developing countries to undertake capital projects, among others.
The Bank presently has a portfolio of US$438M, involving 19 projects scattered across the country – ranging from road construction or rehabilitation to ICT infrastructure and agricultural development projects. The bank intends to pursue all of these to fruition but its officials stress that the chance of realizing this depends on reciprocal demonstration of commitment by the government to its conditions. These conditions include reforms but also performance on the part of the beneficiary.
The bank particularly stresses on accountability. And Mr Kerali said CSOs and the media had a big role to play in this.
Some of the areas it would be looking for improvement on from the government is its ability to share with the public its budget framework, expenditure framework, as well as reporting not only to parliament but also sharing such reports with the public, Mr Kerali said, adding that this could as well benefit the government politically.
“Our experience in several countries shows that a government that is committed to transparency in its fiscal management in particular gains a lot of trust from the population,” he said.
(C) Politico 14/08/15
