The Regional Director for West and Central Africa IFAD, Sama Jatta has on Tuesday 27th September, 2022 pays a courtesy visit to the Minister of Finance and Team at the Minister’s office on George Street, Freetown.
He said the purpose of the visit is to brief the government of the fourth coming visit of the executive boards members of IFAD to Sierra Leone. The executive board he said is composed of 18 Countries as members and 17 alternate’s members.
He noted that the 178 member countries are divided in categories A, B and C such as, developed, OPEC and developing countries. “We are expecting out of these board members about 20 to 25 countries will be represented in the delegation to arrive on the 19 -27 November, 2022, he disclosed.” He further explained that the visit is to meet with the government, other development partners that are active in Sierra Leone, civil society members, farmers, various organizations, women’s group and youths that are involved in developmental projects or programmes of IFAD.
He emphasized that the conversation the team would want to have with all these groups is to ascertain IFAD engagements in their activities and programmes, the challenges faced and to frankly speak on possible solutions to solve those problems. He added that the team would spend two days in Freetown and 3 days in the field to engaged and discussed with these groups.
He discussed some of the on- going portfolios which includes; The Value Chain Developments Projects that would be closed in 2026, the Rule of Finance Community Institutions Development projects which would end next year noting that the latter has done a lots of big achievements in Sierra Leone.
He stated that they are quite satisfied with the partnership of the Government, adding that IFAD could do much more to ensure that the portfolios do better as he made a recall of when he was the Country Director for IFAD in Sierra Leone in 1991-1996 of which the country’s portfolio was one of the best in the sub-region which had prompted IFAD at that time to recruits some members of those projects to become part of IFAD team.
Minister of Finance, Denise K. Vandi welcomed MR. Jatta to the Ministry and assured him of government support to work with IFAD in the implementation of all its Port Folios programmes across the country. He added that the government had had reliable and sustainable relationship over the years with IFAD and expressed delight to receive the board of directors to render the necessary support for a comfortable and effective mission in the country.
The Financial Secretary, Sahr Lahai Jusu also joined the minister in welcoming Mr. Jatta to Sierra Leone and assured him of the government commitment and support to receive the delegations in November.
MoF Media and Communications Unit
