IMANI’s Analysis and Recommendations Ahead of the March 7 Presidential Elections in Sierra Leone
The OpenTax Initiative has read, endorsed and adopted especially recommendations on the economy as presented in the IMANIFESTO Report on how Sierra Leonean politicians plan to face and deal with the country’s challenges.
However, we have provided the link to the full report here, detailing IMANI’s analysis and recommendations ahead of the March 7 Presidential Elections. Most of these specific recommendations on the economy emphasise our earlier positions and statements as one of the country’s leading tax campaigners.
Leading candidates in the March 7 elections (Photo Credit: IMANI)
Recommendations: Economy
Improve tax compliance: Achieving greater compliance to tax must be a priority of any Sierra Leonean government if it is to intensify revenue mobilisation to support the recovery process. The winning party must consider analysing the compliance gap, segmenting it in order to adopt appropriate instruments to drive the compliance of the various segments and continuous monitoring and evaluation of measures adopted.
Sustainable revenue mobilisation: The winning party must also consider implementing sustainable revenue mobilisation measures. The incoming government must initiate steps to widen the tax net through formalisation and also to enhance revenue administration through efficient addressing systems.
Transparency and accountability: The wining party must commit to use audit reports to promote accountability and transparency in public expenditure management. The utilisation rate of 28.8% must be greatly improved. Punitive sanctions must also be put in place and strictly enforced to serve as a deterrent and to ensure sustainability in the efforts to promote accountability.
Private sector development: To enhance private sector development, reforms to the business environment needs to be continuous, deliberate and well-targeted. Reforms should not just be a ‘box ticking’ agenda to score political points.
Increase agricultural productivity: There is the need to channel the increase budgetary allocations towards increasing agricultural productivity. Specifically, access to farm inputs, irrigation and appropriate technology to reduce the incidence food insecurity.
Manufacturing and production: It will be prudent to complement increasing agricultural productivity efforts with value addition policies
Prop tourism sector: To spur the much need returns and patronage within the tourism sector, there is the need to increase investment to expand and improve basic infrastructure to the various tourist sites. Such Investment is critical in the area of road construction, telecommunication and electricity.