The talk about a pending Cabinet Reshuffle by President Bio will definitely not save an already sinking ship.The captain of the ship, President Bio is disappointed that his ship is staggering far away from the expected destination.
Quite recently the President has told his Ministers of Government in a recent Cabinet Retreat that he was not pleased about the performance of his Ministers and that he would no longer tolerate excuses.
He further recounted that the actions of his government should have practical and tangible implications for his people and just on paper.
President Bio has criticized his Chief Minister and implored him to be more intrusive into the activities of the various Ministries with a view to coordinate them in a more effective manner that will bring in tangible results in the delivery of basic social services for the people of Sierra Leone.
President Bio had by this statement vindicated many Sierra Leoneans who are of the view that things are not moving in the right way.
In view of these many phrases have been designed to present the current economic situation such as ‘De Gron Dry’ De Game don Potor Potor, D Game don big etc etc.
President Bio according to many Sierra Leoneans is set to again strike the sledge hammer by sacking non-performing Ministers from his Cabinet just as he did on the 7th November, 2019 when he axed the likes of Joseph Ndanema, Dr. Tengbeh and many others in an unprecedented cabinet reshuffle.
But whether such sackings had impacted on the challenging economy and improve things for the better is an issue all together.
The APC Government of former President Koroma had also engaged in a cyclic process of rotating Ministers from one Ministry to another in the name of cabinet reshuffle.
We have not been able to actually experience tangle changes in the delivery of basic services with these frequent cabinet changes.
What makes matters worse is the fact that the President is not under any obligation to explain to the citizenry why he relives Cabinet Ministers of their positions.The power to appoint and fire Cabinet Ministers rests squarely with him.
On the issue of whether or not a Cabinet reshuffle by President Bio will save an already sinking ship or not, it is the view of many seasoned Sierra Leoneans with some economic background that the current problems of the economy as inherited by the New Direction Government can only be solved by focusing at a number of stubborn indicators that continues to challenge economic recovery.
Former United Nations Diplomat, Kandeh Yumkella has underscored the point during his submission to a debate on the New Direction first Financial Policy Statement that the present government like the previous APC has not been able to control the external debt levels and the Wage bill as they have continue to employ more and more of party surrogates and also engage in ambitious projects.
Even though they have ferociously lampooned the APC for also failing to control these indicators they themselves have fallen victims to these indicators.
Dr.Yumkella had further mentioned that the heavy taxation on the private sector and the closure of most of the mining companies has further compounded the problem and weighed on the economy which is only now reliant on domestic revenue mobilization to fund competing government priorities such as the Human Capital Development projects, payment of salaries and servicing debts.
Against this backdrop, the NGC leader had advised the New Direction government to cut down on their spending and divert much more resources in terms of budgetary support to the agro-forestry and other manufacturing sectors.
This according to him has the propensity to quickly stimulate economic growth by creating jobs and the necessary foreign exchange.
Records have shown that even though government committed to diversify the economy due to the external shocks of the mining revenue budgetary support to the agriculture, fisheries and tourism have not received so much attention in all of the two financial statements of the government.
We saw the 2020 budget attempting to move towards measures at reducing corporate and other taxes in the Airline industry. Government has also committed huge resources to the Small and Medium Terms Loans for women and also planning to invest in the tourism sector to provide hundreds of jobs for youths.
But as it stands things have still not normalize largely due to the fact that the wage bill continues to swell-up coupled up with unsustainable debt measures.
Other Sierra Leoneans are also of the view that the country is also challenged with a donor drought largely because of the initial utterance of the government when they took power.
They have painted a gloomy picture about the state of affairs in the country under the Ernest Koroma and that this might be responsible for this donor drought.
Many investors are giving a cautionary step to invest into the country despite the so-called efforts ate rebranding the country.
President Bio has stated while he took power in April, 2018 that he has inherited the worse economy since independence.
He has blamed the Koroma government for issuing out rampant and unnecessary waivers and tax holidays to mining companies, pursuing a very weak tax policy largely marred by fraud and compromise and many other negative attributes which were counterproductive for the business climate.
President Bio assured the IMF and other IFC’s that had pulled out prior to the March 2018 elections that he would pursue very radical economic measures to bring the economic back on track.
Against this backdrop he issued a number of Executive Orders allowing for the removal of subsidies almost in all sectors including the funding of higher education, duty waivers except those provided for under the Vienna Convention, creation of a single treasury account and many other reforms such as cleaning up the payroll to address issues around the bloated wage bill he inherited.
But with all these reforms how comes that we are again witnessing a situation where in the wage bill and the external debts has far surpassed what they had inherited.
Hence a mere cabinet reshuffle will not save the already sinking ship.