By Sulaiman Jalloh
Statistics Sierra Leone has requested for Thirty-Four Million United States Dollars (US$34m) to conduct the 2025 population and housing census.
While presenting his institution’s proposed 2025 budget at the national budget hearing at the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday, August 27th, 2024, Lansana Kanneh, the Deputy Statistician General said the mandate of Statistics Sierra Leone is to conduct research and provide factual and quality data for national development.
He highlighted that they are planning to rehabilitate the physical infrastructure of its headquarters, roll out capacity building for staff, formulate and facilitate a new Statistics Sierra Leone Act, conduct 2025 population and housing census and develop a Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey 7, among others.
The institution is requesting for US$34m for conduct of the 2025 population and housing census; US$2.14m for provision of socioeconomic and demographic statistics; US$1.5m for strategy of new Statistics Sierra Leone Act; US$4.4m for rehabilitation of headquarters; and US$1.5m for refurbishing of regional offices.
Highlighting some of the key activities they undertook in 2023, the deputy SG said Statistics Sierra Leone did the consumer price index (CPI) which includes the publication of the CPI and the inflation rate for 2023, publish the national account statistics.
He added that they also did a visibility study on the conduct of informal cross-border trade and published business confidence report FY2023.
“We conducted a disability study with support from UNICEF and launched a disability statistics dashboard,” pointing out that other microeconomic data collection for price indexes and the business confidence index is ongoing for quarter 3 of 2024.
He mentioned inadequate disbursement of funds, low salaries and other conditions of service, and lack of conducive working environment as major challenges.
