By Dadson A. Musa

Professor Kelfala Kallon is a learned and experienced man. He lectured economics but it was not in a poor country like ours, it was in the great United States of America. And he spent a considerable length of time there since he went there as a very young man. He came back to his home country, Sierra Leone to serve which was very highly welcomed. He met an economy that was marred by austerity, left behind by the then APC government. This was after much corruption and wasteful spending. He was given the job at our central bank to help turn things around. Before world events like corona and now the Russian/ Ukraine war our economy was struggling and that has been made worse by those two factors. Inflation had started to become a feature of our economy. And that was made worse by global events. To solve the problem instead of Professor Kelfala Kallon sorting out our economy by tackling issues like imports and exports, spending less and making sure leakages in revenue generation are stopped, he has decided to print more money

. The whole redenomination process has cost us so much. He knew that overhauling a nation’s currency is no small project. The only good thing it has done is you can move around with huge physical cash without people noticing. So, the few rich people in our country have had help. But coming down to reality, has the economy been made any better by this very expensive project? I’m afraid, no. We continue to sell our diamonds, rutile, bauxite, fishes, gold in their raw form for pittance and we in turn buy finished products at high costs which the professor failed to address. There is balance of payment deficit sir and redenomination is yet to impact our economy positively. Jobs, I mean good ones not contract ones need to be created to engage our youths. This is so that they can be gainfully employed work hard and help our export drive.

Redenomination is nothing new to economies, but our learned professor went about it in a way that has not helped the economy. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and not political ones need to be sustained. Let there be breathing space for businesses or factories to be set up in this country. These ways sir, inflation would have been controlled. Global economic meltdown is going to be the fall guy. Let us wait and see how we are going to respond to the high costs of living. The Leone has been in rapid free fall and nothing seems to be stopping it. Most of the goods and some services we utilize are imported from abroad. We export very little and our raw materials are sold with buyers determining the price or terms and conditions. People are barely coping to survive

 Copyright –Published in print in Expo Times Newspaper on Wednesday, May 15TH, 2024 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)