Q. Could you give us a general overview of the economic situation in Sierra Leone?

A. The performance of the economy has been mixed. While we have been achieving some significant improvement in some areas, we have not been doing so well in other areas. For example, the overall growth of the economy, what we call the gross domestic product, has been purely competitive. It has been going at over 6 percent. We have managed to keep inflation under control, because we are part of what is called the West African Monitoring Zone, also the IMF has its programme here called the PRGS so we have got certain conditionalities. Our inflation in spite of everything that is happening out there is around 7.5 percent, and that compares favourably with inflation elsewhere. In Nigeria it's 8.4%, in Ghana 30%, in the Gambia 18.4% and in Guinea 16.4%; so we are doing better than our friends in the sub region, but having said that, our concern is: how do we translate the gains of growth to addressing poverty? How do you distribute the benefits of growth equitably across the population? That is what we are doing and some of the programmes, maybe, the Minister of Development would have told you that we have put in place directly with things like the Poverty Alleviation Programme, getting the poorer segment of the population to actually get the benefits of the programme. Here in the bank, we are concerned basically with the formulation of monetary policy as well as supervision and regulation of the financial system. So my task here is to ensure that we get stable exchange rates, low inflation that is consistent with stable high economic growth, and ensure there is employment. These are the objectives of monetary policy.

Q. What are the main incentives taken by the Central Bank in order to support the growth of the economy?

A. We deal with monetary policy, so the main plans of monetary policy deal with managing the exchange rates so that they do not experience what is called unsustainable depreciation. We also manage inflation to ensure that we achieve what theoretically economists call full employment. Here we have put in place the foreign exchange auction system because there is a wide diversity between the demand for foreign exchange and the supply of foreign exchange. We have put an auction system in place. There are three windows in this system; there is the competitive window, the non-competitive window and the small window that is called an oil window. So what we do in the foreign exchange auctioning is to provide the rational market determining distribution of the available foreign exchange, so that every Wednesday we get bidders coming here mainly in the commercial and business sector as well as in the petroleum sector. Bid for foreign exchange and the rate that we give is the competitive rate. Because between the bank rate and the parallel market rate we have what we call the auction rate; this auction rate is an average of all the rates that bidders put forward, divided by the number of rate with an average. So it is an incentive because when people who are out there in the parallel market pay huge sums of money in dollars, the exchange rate there is sustainably high, but when you come to the auction, you can get a rate that will maximise the urge of your limited Leone resources and will also make you acquire dollars at a prize that will enable you to acquire the goods and services that you want to import, and finally that will ensure that you do not price those goods and services in the market at the price that will harm the consumers.

Q. Sierra Leone is classified as a heavily indebted poor country. But the IMF has reduced the debt last year. Where are you going to allocate the money you safe from that debt reduction?

A. You see first of all, our stratification as heavily indebted poor country or HIPC country derives from the fact that both, ourselves as a Government and the international community give an assessment of our economic fundamental poverty, the income that people have, the per capita income, and all of that with our basic infrastructure, our health and education facility. We are able on the basis of that assessment to form judgement that we are really at a very low level of development, so therefore, we met the definition of being classified as a heavily indebted poor country. Now the IMF and the World Bank came forward and said that if you are really in that sort of situation we will provide a policy to assist you. Firstly we will write off some of your debts, but when we do write those debts off, you must be able to allocate the resources to areas, which they actually identified. They also said that you must, as the IMF is saying, be able to ensure prudent management. For example you must ensure that your expenditure does not keep on rising above your revenues. So on those two terms, we agreed with them and we identified the areas. So these resources that we get from the programme for heavily indebted poor countries, we will all agree that it should be allocated to reduction or poverty alleviation activities. If you have met the Minister of Education, he must have told you that we have used most of that for rehabilitation and reconstruction of schools. There is a programme for ensuring that the basic administrative units - the Chiefdoms should each have a composite, a primary school, junior secondary school and senior secondary school. As well, some funds have gone into procurement of educational materials, reading materials, teaching aids and all of that. We have put a good chunk of it into the health sector, procurement of basic drugs for people, the rehabilitation and reconstruction of peripheral health centres and clinics and health posts as well as the training of health personnels and all of that. We have also put some of that into infrastructural development, because during the war, all of our roads and bridges were destroyed so we have invested some of that in the social sector. Some of that money is also going into agriculture in terms of regenerating agriculture, most of the plans was abandoned because of the rebel war. So we are now providing basic inputs, planting materials, fertilizers etc to farmers, so basically the resources are going directly into those activities that will immediately start turning the lives of the people around.

Q. As well, you get some funds from ADB and other Institutions. Could you tell us roughly on which projects that money has been dispatched?

A. Most of these organisational funds are programmed before they come. They are programmatic funds, meaning that like the ADB they are interested in some sectors. They are mainly interested in the Education sector and the Agriculture. They actually complement and sometimes overlap in the agricultural sector - FAO and IFA. So funds got from them, the negotiation is usually done with the government and then they allocate the them to specific projects.

Q. Also, you ad a private sector forum, inviting investors to take advantage of te new opportunities Sierra Leone is offering. Could you tell us about the present investment situation in the private sector and the needs to improve it?

A. The private sector I would say in spite of the rhetoric is still under subscribed, it is still under resourced. The private sector is everything from the big commercial firms that we have around the country down to individual retailers. We all agree that they hold the key in turning the economy around because it is sectoral. Therefore, the private sector should drive the economy in terms of investment. There are just two components. The domestic as well as the international. The domestic one is narrow because it doesn't have the capital to invest, and that is why we are coming out with programmes such as micro-financing so that we will be able to address the needs of the small operators in the private sectors. But what we really need now is direct foreign investments, private sector investments in this country. In the tourism sector for example we need it in a very special way, because the potential has to be developed. What you can see now is just the top of the iceberg. If you people go up country, you need to go to Sulima, you need to go to Bumnubu and see our waterfalls, you need to go to more interesting places. What you see along the beach is a joke. What you see at Tokeh and Number Two river is still a joke. You know when you go to a places like Sulima, you'll see nature at its best. We have got unlimited water resources. If we get a private investor out there who will just put investment in water resources and come out with all of these activities like you have in Holland and other places, develop canals and so on. But the major constraints is that we have had a bad press. People still believe that we are at war, they believe that these is still insecurity, they really are not informed you know, but the potential is unlimited so what we need is the infusion of huge direct private capital investment in this country.

Q. Do you already have an example of a major private investment in this country, and what sector could be very profitable?

A. We are getting very little. It is coming in now because presently in the banking or financial sector we are doing what I call diversification. It's in many ways both in terms of getting the existing Institutions themselves to a wider geographical as well as to enlarge their products. Some of the new products that can be delivered to the population out there. You see basically at the moment, they can save their money and they can have advances or loans. That sort of products is very narrow. We want them to go into new product lines where, for example, they will be able to support various sectors such as the agriculture, the industry or the construction and provide loans that are well supervised, that go into direct investment in the development of those sectors. I'm also trying to get foreign banks, other entrants in the market like next year, I'm getting a bank called International Commercial Bank Sierra Leone Ltd. They are coming from Malaysia. In January they'll be starting. They have already provided the initial capital for this, and I've given them the licence. Unless getting this more competitive, the financial sector is the answer. In fact, under the privatization policy we are also going to privatize two of the Governments owned banks, Sierra Leone Commercial Bank and Rokel Commercial Bank and we have already got people who have professed some interests as well as re-capitalize and resuscitate the National Development Bank.

A. If I have to select two randomly but really seriously, I see agriculture and tourism. I'll go for those two because our potential in those two areas are unlimited. The Minister of Agriculture must have told you, we are presently utilizing maybe a quarter of the land resources that we have in this country, and maybe less than a quarter of the water resources. We can turn this country into a green belt and produce all sorts of products for exports, not only for domestic consumption but for export. We have got great potential for the cattle industry as well. The economy of countries like Botswana, Ethiopia and so on depends on this too, in addition to diamonds. We have the potential for that. Most of the Northern belt far north is really cattle economy. So Agriculture should be the key, not only because it absorbs a greater part of the population, but also because of food security, food self-sufficiency as well as generates crops for export and foreign exchange. Tourism is very attractive. In Gambia next door, it is driving the economy. We have better potential than the Gambia. We have better potential than Malaysia and these other places where Tourists go in terms of the beauty of our beaches, our forests, our weather and so on.

Q. Does the Central Bank has a good relationship with the UK and how do you think the new travel advice will affect the relations between both countries?

A. I would like to look at that question at two levels. First, the relationship of the Central Bank with our colleagues in the UK. Traditionally we have had excellent relationship with the Bank of England. Infact a couple of months ago, I was in London for the Bank of England's symposium and I witnessed the historic event of the retirement of Sir Edward George, the Bank Governor. He had worked for the Bank of England for 30 years and I think 12 of those years he was Governor - an excellent intellectual. We have had a lot of interactions with them. They have provided technical assistance to us over the years. They have provided training for this bank; we have also sent our staff over to London for training that is provided by the Bank. In fact before I left London, I had a meeting with the successor to Sir Edward George, Marvin Cain and he has promised to provide some training for my staff and two of them are already on their way to the UK for training in the areas of banking supervision, payment systems and all of them. So at the financial level, we have a good relationship.

Q. Is the UK still the main contributor for this country?

A. Britain makes a significant contribution, but they are not the only one. We have relationship even with the African Central Bank and at the largest level, through the IMF and the World Bank, with other Central Banks across the world. But Britain has been providing significant assistance. At the National Governmental level, of course the story is familiar. Britain helped us during the war. You know we have always been a British colony, a former British colony. The present Prime Minister of Britain has been very sympathetic to Sierra Leone and at least, Sierra Leone and Britain are great friends. There are many of us, many Sierra Leonean who studied in Britain.

Q. How do you see the economy of Sierra Leone in the next three years?

A. In the next three years I think the prospects are very good. We are at the moment just coming out of a very destructive war and we have managed remarkably, I will say to be where we are now. If you went to Burundi that had gone out of war for five to ten years, they are worse than us. If you go to Somalia, you see Sierra Leoneans are very remarkable people. We have managed to be where we are now and I believe that three years down the way we would have got ourselves out of the economic difficulties we are having now, for e.g. in the critical sectors we would have made significant strides. In education for example we would have provided educational services on an equitable bases across the country. Health delivery service would also in 3 years be available to almost every Sierra Leoneans at affordable prices. Clean water supply, road network and all of that would be also available to Sierra Leoneans. On the monetary front I believe that over the next three years, we would have diversified the financial sector considerably, we would have made it competitive with other systems elsewhere. We would have enriched it, we would have add more Banks and non-financial institutions, we would have had a capital market in Sierra Leone. We would have created opportunities for our people out there, to have financial services brought to their doorstep. The Central Bank is also presently experimenting what we call community banks. They are four of them that they have established now. I intend to have two more. By the next three years, maybe we will have over a dozen of the community banks that are managed, driven and owned by the people themselves. That will be part of the empowerment process. We'll have the people running their own financial Institutions and the experiment that we are making now with community banks if they succeed will be the nucleus, the seed for those sort of things so the prospects are extremely bright.

Q. Could you briefly summarize your background, your achievements and what you did before coming here?

A. It's a very long story. I don't know whether they are achievements just where I have been. I actually studied economics here at the University Fourah College. I then went to UK. There is a great University there called New Castle-Upon-Tyne. I did a Masters degree there in Agriculture Economics and then I came back and lectured in the University of Sierra Leone for about four years. First at Njala University where I was head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, and then in Fourah Bay College where I lectured money and banking in the Economics Department for a year, and then I went into the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, I worked for three years as an Economists, then to the ILO in Geneva and in Ethiopia for five years, in Addis Ababa. I was there in the 80's. Then I came back and worked for an NGO for five years, a Canadian NGO and then while I was working for the NGO, I was responsible for the programme called the Functional Adult Literacy Program which was a comprehensive community programme that taught people, brought literacy to people, the literacy that is concern with their lives. I went to the UN, I worked for the UN for ten years; UNDP here in Freetown, UNDP in Papua New Guinea and the UN system in Kosovo. I was in Kosovo for one year, after the allied forces had destroyed that place. I went there in the year 2000. I was there and then registered by 1991 with Washington University and I did my research and completed in the year 2000. I went to the US and presented my theses then I went to Kosovo, I spent a year there. It was in Kosovo that President Kabbah summoned me to come back and made me deputy Minister of Development and Economic Planning and I did that for about one and half years and then after the elections he made me Deputy Minister of Finance and I was there for one year and then on the 27th April this year he made me Bank Governor. My background is so rich that I have almost everything in me.

Q. Do you have a message for our readers? What would you like to tell them about the country?

A. You are the messengers. Just tell them that it's a wonderful country, the people are extremely friendly. You can hardly find people who are accommodating and friendly as Sierra Leoneans. They like strangers, they love people who come and that is really good for us because if you go to a strange place and you are embraced, it gives you confidence to come back but above all the message is, this is a land of unlimited potential in almost every sector. We have unlimited human and natural resources especially the natural resources. We have agriculture, diamonds, gold rutile, bauxite, iron ore, we have every mineral that you may think of in this country. We have very rich marine resources. Some of the richest in the world, although we are not managing it properly. I must add that. We have good climate as well as environment that is attractive. We have six months of rain and infact sometimes eight months of rain. It is still raining in this country, whereas our neighbours in Senegal and the Gambia are having drought and desertification. So God is very kind to us. We have greens in spite of deforestation. If you look around even Freetown, you we can see greens and you don't see that in many places. So its very attractive and the message is "come, your investment will be secured, the policies and regulations and laws are also investor friendly, we'll allow you to repatriate a significant proportion of your profit, to your country, even up to 60%. There are no embargoes on entry and exit into this country, as long as you have your passports and you come in legitimately, and you bring in money that is not money laundered and you do not bring in dangerous drugs and dangerous arms and ammunitions. This is a very friendly country. Thank you very much.