Freetown — Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority (NRA), Allieu Sesay has wrapped up his almost two-week European trip to Berlin in Germany and Brussels in Belgium.

Mr. Sesay is heading home with broad smiles after grabbing four scholarships for his Customs workers to pursue Masters Degree programmes in Germany. Furthermore, the smooth-talking NRA boss has succeeded in ensuring that, for the first time, Sierra Leone now has a seat on the six-member Audit Committee of the World Customs Organization (WCO) representing about 30 countries from West and Central Africa.

In addition, Sesay has also succeeded in getting a seat for Sierra Leone in the Human Resource Working Group which is tasked with the responsibility of designing appropriate programmes to build capacity and motivate staff in Customs administration in the West and Central Africa regions.

After his WCO meeting in Brussels, Sesay took time off his busy schedule to grant a brief interview in the office of the Information Attache at the Sierra Leone Embassy in Brussels, Chernor Ojuku Sesay and threw light on his trip to Europe and the performance of NRA towards the improvement of the national economy.

Get a taste of what he said:

Information Attaché (IA): You've just come to the end of your European trip, how would you describe it?

Allieu Sesay: It has been very, very successful. For me it is the most successful trip of all the trips I've taken personally as well as to the country.

IA: How successful?

Allieu: It has been wonderful in the sense that I came on two missions. One was in Berlin (Germany) and the other, here in Brussels (Belgium), both of them centered on capacity building issues.

In Berlin, we were there to discuss issues relating to capacity building for customs policy and customs administration. This was hosted by an organization in the Federal Ministry of Development and Economic Cooperation known as InWent. The object of the dialogue was to discuss the findings of the programme that started in 2005 and to see what sort of strategies and indicators can be designed for further improvement in the programme. The programme also aimed at broadening the scope of intervention to include West African countries, of which Sierra Leone, Nigeria and The Gambia participated from the Anglophone front. It was so successful in the sense that a Masters programme that is jointly run by this Global Trade Programme and the Munster University in Germany.

It is a Masters programme in Customs Administration in which case they invited a maximum of 20 students from all of these countries to participate in the programme. The programme is a two-year course of which one year is done in Germany and Sierra Leone has been offered four spaces of which two are confirmed and if we have candidates that are strong enough to contest with other candidates from all the regions, then we might be able to get all the four spaces.

IA: Have you nominated candidates for the already two confirmed places?

Allieu: We haven't done so yet, but I have communicated that to the Commissioner of Customs and the Admin. Human Resource Dept. They will scrutinize candidates they think are eligible based on the criteria for selection. The candidates must be employees of NRA and in particular they have to be Customs employees.

IA: You've talked about Berlin, what about Brussels?

Allieu: My trip in Brussels centered on my attendance of the 113th and 114th Council's meetings of the World Customs Organization and there are about 174 members of the WCO. And the principal objective of the WCO is to assist in terms of streamlining policies and procedures for customs administration at the same time to facilitate trade whilst generating revenues for government.

IA: People are talking a lot about high custom tariffs in Sierra Leone, what's your reaction to that?

Allieu: The tariff in Sierra Leone compared favourably with many countries in Africa and to some extent to some of the emerging economies. What we've done over the years is to streamline our processes and procedures, and in line with that, we've also broadened our tax base domestically and reduced tariffs on essential commodities.

As far back as the early 2000, we were having rates up to about 70­% to 100%, but this has gone down considerably and the maximum rate we now have is 30%. And we are going down gradually, consistency with the ECOWAS Common External Tariffs which has a maximum ban of 20%. But what we've done compared to other countries, is that we have implemented over 80% of these requirements and as at now we are the lead country among all the countries of ECOWAS in terms of implementing the ECOWAS Common External Tariff. This has also affected the movement of prices in the country as inflation is stable in the country notwithstanding the fact that there has been external shock in 2008 and we are still feeling the impact on that in 2009. But with streamline processes, procedures and enhancement in trade facilitations, we have been able to make tremendous progress on the Customs front.

IA: How would you describe your revenue collection drive?

Allieu: It has been impressive in the face of all the challenges that we face. Compared to 2006/2007, revenue performance had been dismal. But when we came, we were able to increase revenue in 2008 both in nominal and real terms. In nominal terms, it rose by over 23% and in real terms it rose by close to 15%. This is quite impressive and for the first time we've been able to exceed the Le 600 Billion mark. In 2007, we were only able to scrape about Le 502 Billion and this tells you that we have made tremendous efforts in terms of creating a level playing field for all actors.

Whilst the rates have gone down considerably in 2008, we have been able to generate all of these, because in the face of the economic crisis, rise in prices of petroleum products, rise in prices of basic food stuff, government was able to contain the situation by reducing tariffs on rice, sugar and flour. The custom duty for rice was reduced from 15% to 10% and the base which had gone up to about 750USD and 1000USD per metric ton was also capped at 375USD. So notwithstanding that loss, we were still able to make sufficient gains. For sugar and flour, they were each 20% custom duty but this was also reduced from 20% to 10% and we also removed all duties from computer products and computer accessories etc. all in a bid to ensure that we take advantage of the technological development in the world. Notwithstanding all of these, we were able to raise revenue substantially both from customs as well as internal revenue.

IA: As a revenue collector, is the government's fiscal performance satisfactory?

Allieu: It has been impressive and I think this was commended by the IMF Board. You would recalled that because of the difficulties we had in terms of getting our development partners to disburse some of the assistance they promised and notwithstanding also the global economic recession and its negative impact on the economy in terms of export and import productivity, the government was able to adopt a cash base budget in which case we only spend what we have. Though some poverty related spending were affected, but they were largely protected by government in a bid to minimize the burden on the already poor population of Sierra Leone. But I must say in terms of macro-economic stability, the macro-economic fundamentals were sound, inflation was kept at the barest minimum and at the same time also the reserves were healthy. So I must say it was particularly encouraging on the part of Sierra Leone that almost all of the performance criteria relating to our

programme in terms of poverty reduction and growth facility with the fund were observed.

IA: Any other good news for Sierra Leone from the WCO conference?

Allieu: This is also a phenomenal success during my participation for the first time in the Council meetings of the World Customs Organization. For the first time Sierra Leone succeeded in getting a seat on the Audit Committee of the WCO and in that Audit Committee, Sierra Leone is to represent about 30 countries from West and Central Africa.

In that Committee, there are six members representing the entire 174 members of the WCO and I'm sure in that Committee we would be able to know better what obtains in terms of finances of the organization and how we could take advantage of the opportunities available currently as well as in the future.

In addition to that, we also succeeded in making a representation on the regional working group, that is the Western and Central Africa regions.

We succeeded also in getting a seat for Sierra Leone in the Human Resource Working Group and that working group is tasked with the responsibility of designing appropriate programmes to build capacity and motivate staff in Customs administration in the West and Central Africa regions.