“Our domestic revenue makes up only 11.5 percent of GDP and is one of the lowest in the World…” President Julius Maada Bio was quoted as saying during the State Opening of the 5th Parliament of the 5th Republic of Sierra Leone. In addition, on page 4 of the New Direction Manifesto, it is stated that “the focus will be to increase the domestic revenue, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio from about 10% to 20%… and the Minister of Finance Jacob Jusu Saffa said on Radio Democracy Gud Morning Salone programme on June 11, 2020 that “COVID-19 may not affect the 2020 Budget Implementation…”
With reference to the above commitments the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN) has decided to start tracking the above policy commitments with a view to give monthly real-time updates. In the meantime, BAN notes that information available from the Accountant General’s Office only include one month of COVID-19 (April) and this means that they have included broader analysis to enrich this first issue of the report. The report titled “2020 Revised Domestic Revenue and 2023 Revenue to GDP Target: Where Are We in Midst of The Covid-19?” will be released today Wednesday 19th August, 2020 on AYV TV.
The Public Financial Management consortium, which comprises the Budget Advocacy Network (BAN), Centre for Accountability and the Rule of Law (CARL), Restless Development (RD) and Christian Aid (CA) with support from Department for International Development (DFID), sees these commitments as vital for the delivery of essential social services including the Free Quality Education and the Free Healthcare Social services are financed through incomes accrued from the domestic revenue collection.
The BAN analysis aims at finding out how (in monetary terms) the COVID-19 is impacting on domestic revenue collection and the extent to which the NRA is meeting its revised target for 2020 and that of the domestic revenue to GDP by 2023. “It is also a way of making information on the revenue collection transparent so that citizens can understand how this impacts service delivery so that they are able to fairly hold duty bearers accountable for their commitments.” Whilst there are talks of impact of Covid-19 on the economy, BAN stated that there is currently no monthly updates on how revenue is being impacted in real number terms. This information they stressed is important for the public so that they are prepared for challenges that may come with this impact – in terms of allocations for service delivery.
According to BAN, the data used for this tracking is the published monthly statement of the Consolidated Fund, which includes actual revenues and expenditures done by the Accountant General’s department and published on the Ministry of Finance’s (MoF) Website. This publication looks at data in the first four (4) months of 2019 and the first four (4) months of 2020. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) used is Le 41.4 trillion. The daily revenue collection of 2019 is calculated by dividing the total monthly revenue by the total working days excluding weekends and public holidays.
Saturdays are included in the 2020 daily and monthly domestic revenue analysis. The Exchange rate used is the average monthly rate from the Bank of Sierra Leone website.
By Zainab Iyamide Joaque