Economic Association of Sierra Leone (EASL), has held its first Quarterly Brown Bag Seminar Series as part of its diagnostic seminars to provide research-based evidence to economic policies at national level.
The seminar was held on Friday 19th August 2022 at the Lacs Villa conference room on 3a Cantonment Road Off, King Harman Road in Freetown. Dignitaries present include academics, researchers, managers, policymakers and students to share their research findings and thoughts with national and international experts on research papers.
EASL presented four research papers to provide research-based evidence to policies at national level with both national and international experts on the four research papers which includes-A Granger Causality Test on the Impact of Public Debt on the Economic Growth of Sierra Leone (1986-2015), Simulating Tax Effects on Economic activities in Sierra Leone, Dropping the Zeros between hope and reality for Sierra Leone and Supply Chains under Covid-19 disruptions.
President of EASL, Dr. Brima IB Kargbo said EASL is a non-profit making and non-government professional body of all Economists in Sierra Leone and outside Sierra Leone of Sierra Leonean origin with representatives from the US, UK and Australia.
He said EASL has been in existence for over 10 years but was dormant, adding that the Association only revived itself last year. He said the key functions of the Association is to promote research in all fields of economics and to provide feedbacks to line ministries in terms of policy and on how do researchers relate their work in class rooms and other areas to become known to policy makers especially at Central Banks and the Ministry of Finance.
Dilating on the essence of the engagement, Dr. Kargbo said it was the first quarterly session which they called the Brown Bag Seminar because it was done within office hours in order to discuss certain topics that are topical to the Sierra Leone economy where people are encouraged to come with their research ideas to harness ideas from senior economics to critics and forward for international publication.
"The program will help solve most of the economic challenges the country has because from the intellectual base, it transfers to Human Capital Development and some of our members are from the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL), the National Revenue Authority (NRA), and Ministry of Finance among others," he stated.
He said most of their discussions at the seminar will be disseminated to the monetary policy authorities at the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance.
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Dr. Kargbo also mentioned that they were also looking at the redenomination of the Sierra Leone currency, whether there is hope for the economy after redenomination?, what is they reality on ground after redenomination? , maintaining that they were also looking at others countries in Africa and around the world that have redenominated their currencies to know where they got it right or wrong.
He continued that they were observing in the case of Sierra Leone as to which complementary policy can the Central Bank embark on so that the redenomination once instead of having another round of redenomination in the next couple of years.
AESL recommended that policies such as redenomination should not be done in isolation so that at the end of the day the calibration of the economy will be done in a once and for all exercise instead of doing it once every couple of years, because there is always a tendency that when you redenominate once you may end up doing another redenomination if active steps are not taken.
The AESL President said at the end of the engagement, they would have standard papers because they are providing a peer review mechanism where peoples' work are peer reviewed before sent for publication.
