By: Saidu Jalloh
The Secretary General of the Sierra Leone Importers Association, Rashid Conteh, in an interview spoke about the recent happening in the 2024 budget and the imposition of the 5% tax on rice.
The Sierra Leone Importers Association is a pressure group that advocates for large, medium and small scale businesses in Sierra Leone and also consumers.
Rashid Conteh opening the session by reminiscing on the 2023 Finances Act in which he stated that the Act which did not favor certain business at all. He said due to a dialogue with the government, they made some amendments in those areas.
He also gave an example on the GST threshold from 2010 to 2011 was about 350 million old Leones in 2020, the threshold was increased to 100, 000, 000 old Leones which affected small business and people who sells at the street were captured in the GST threshold.
He also commended the government for reducing the threshold from 100, 000, 000 to 500, 000, 000 through the negotiations they had with the government. He also spoke about the taxes imposed on businesses which are cash based businesses, petroleum, travel agencies were slammed with three percent tax whether the make profit or not they should pay the three percent tax. “Some of those businesses their margins are so small if you take three percent from them, it will knock them down because their profits are so small,” Mr Rashid Conteh explained.
He explained that the GST on agricultural equipment and mining equipment did affect him because there were no taxes on that equipment and all of a sudden government imposed tax on them. Mr. Conteh also noted that coincidentally, the flagship program of the big game changers was agriculture and feed salon which government taught it fit that they should revised the tax on agricultural equipment, which they did.
In speaking of the 5% tax on rice, he expressed dismay that as of date Sierra Leoneans are spending 250 million dollars on importing rice and she we have 5.5 million hectares of valuables land. “We are boosting in the world that we have the youngest population in the continent and up till now in the last three days in December it is still raining in Sierra Leone,” he said.
He continued that in their early days it would stop to rain in Sierra Leone in September but now it rains till December. He described as a shame that they had not done in enough to boost agriculture in Sierra Leone. He said food insecurity had heated 82%, which he said it has become harder for Sierra Leoneans to feed themselves.
He commended the government for the Feed Salone Programme which he described as a good initiative to boost the agricultural sector in Sierra Leone. He recommended that although the Feed Salone Programme is a policy statement, government should have wait to at least see from this year to next how productive the production of rice would be them they could have imposed the 5% tax on rice.
He concluded that at this stage the Feed Salon Programme is at a premature stage, but he admired the steps government had taken to shift the narrative to have sufficient food.
