Launching a five-year private sector development strategy plan titled: ‘Unleashing the Talent of Our People: A Vision and A Promise’ yesterday at the Bintumani Hotel, President Ernest Koroma noted that “by 2018… Sierra Leoneans will still live on less than $1 a day.”
He however noted that “to reduce poverty significantly and improve the lives of majority of Sierra Leoneans we need to achieve an annual growth rate of 10% or more.”
The President revealed that “even the maintenance of our respectable 6.5% per annum growth rate will mean that by 2018 Sierra Leone’s GDP will reach a $350 per capital meaning that majority of Sierra Leoneans will still live on less than $1 a per day.”
President Koroma explained that the agenda for change that he has articulated and championed since he took office in 2007 was designed to deliver economic growth, reduce poverty and improve the human resources of our country.
Within this framework, he said, “there is a clear role of the private sector,” noting “without whom our growth objectives will not be achievable.”
The President said, “the private sector is therefore a fundamental principle underlining economic growth.”
He furthered, “the pursuit of broad based economic growth that cut across productive sectors, add value to our resources and enable our entrepreneurs to compete in the international trade is the most viable and the primary root out of poverty for Sierra Leoneans.” This he said can be achieved “Only through substantial increase in private sector investment can we attain a diversify growth that widens opportunities for Sierra Leoneans and with that will come productive jobs in our growing formal sector and higher incomes for self employed,” the President explained.
President Koroma said, “no one shall imagine that achieving a sustained growth rate in excess of 10% a year is easy. On the contrary it is a complex process that requires that numerous strands are woven together to form a recognizable mosaic. Management of such a process as I have learnt during my time in business highlights the importance of a clear vision and a need for focus, disciple, tenacity and perseverance.”
All these attributes, he continued “are necessary ingredients for achieving successful outcome that we all desire. The vision we set here is of a Sierra Leone that we are proud of, a nation of entrepreneurs generating an attractive investment in the most productive sectors of the economy, bring innovation into every sphere of their enterprise competing forward and winning customers and business in domestic and international spheres; a nation of diverse entrepreneurs not one class or group, but for all participating in all sectors competing in a level playing field where the rules are fair, transparent and adhered to by all.”
Minister of Trade and Industry, David Carew in his welcome statement explained that “the purpose of this is event is not to look back at the development of this strategy that we are about to launch which took place over the last fifteen months, we are here to look forward to the implementation and what we all need to do to achieve the results that will make a difference to Sierra Leoneans and Sierra Leone.”
This private sector strategy, he said, “is a partnership between the public and the private sector and it includes what we intend to do as a government using our various ministries department and agencies.” He added “It also includes what the private sector will do to invest in and strengthen the economy,” he said.
He furthered that private sector strategy includes “the commitment of our development partners and the civil society, what they will do to encourage accountability across all levels.”
The launching forum was followed by questions and answers by stakeholders which the President and some of his “army of ministers” as he described them responded to.