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PRESIDENT BIO’S WASTEFUL SPENDING AND FISCAL RECKLESSNESS ARE UNDERMINING ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN SIERRA LEONE By Kabs Kanu Last year, the International Monetary Fund ( IMF ) warned the Maada Bio SLPP Government that that the country’s unmanageable domestic and external debt burden posed a signifiant threat to the government’s ability to provide essential public services like healthcare, food, housing, electricity and education. The IMF classified Sierra Leone as a high- risk nation in debt crisis. Sierra Leone was considered a nation at high risk for debt distress, because of factors like a high debt-to-GDP ratio, reliance on costly domestic borrowing, and fiscal overruns. Other factors included the economy’s vulnerability to external shocks, to commodity prices and exchange rate depreciation, which can worsen its debt situation. Also, debt service obligations were found to be increasing, consuming a significant portion of domestic revenue. A Sierra Leone newspaper, THE EXCLUSIVE , in an article in its Friday March 1, 2024 edition, titled IMF WARNS SIERRA LEONE , stated categorically then that this classification of Sierra Leone as a high- risk nation for debt crisis “ was a stark warning to the government and citizens alike , highlighting the pressing need for urgent action to address the country’s mounting debt crisis “ . This gauntlet thrown to the flailing SLPP Government tasked Sierra Leone’s economic policymakers and stakeholders with an urgent fiducial responsibility to help make Sierra Leone’s debt levels , estimated by the IMF to be U.S $ 5 Billion at the time , more sustainable and manageable . But how could this be when President Maada Bio himself, who should know better , is a one- man economic wrecking crew ? President Bio is the most profligate and wasteful leader to have ever ruled Sierra Leone. Not only has the president set the agenda for he, his wife Fatima Bio, who operates as a co- President , his family members like his niece Admire Bio , ministers and public officials to live ostentatiously exorbitant lifestyles at the expense of the country’s meagre resources and foreign aid ; he himself spends his waking moments traveling all over the globe, excessively and recklessly wasting the country’s money on these worthless trips that bring nothing to the national coffers or the food plates of hungry, starving Sierra Leoneans. How can we ever attain economy recovery in Sierra Leone when the President himself has no respect for money and is so wasteful and treats the country’s funds and resources like an inheritance from his late Father, Pa. Wonie Bio ? When President Bio is not frittering away our precious resources on fruitless and useless travels , he is very busy making reckless and redundant appointments to please cronies, tribesmen and women and sycophants , whose greedy mouths have become even more widely opened for financial appeasements and rewards. Despite all his public posturing and loud, annoying, hypocritical manifestations of his commitment to help the Sierra Leone economy recover and grow, President Bio his own self is the chief progenitor, enemy and architect of the country’s present economic downfall and impending doom. He has no respect for economic thrift and frugality. Economic restraint , prudence, temperance and austerity are never in President Bio’s governance creed. President Bio, to conceal his lavish , wasteful spirit from concerned media and increasingly critical citizens , no longer announces details and numbers of his delegations to these foreign trips, but everybody knows that Bio frequently travels with multitudes of officials, hangers-on, bootlickers , family members , economic leeches and dependents to offer them also the opportunities to enrich themselves on per diems. Bio’s recent delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York was frigheningly bloated with sycophants and idlers, who had no roles to play in the deliberations of the August body and spent their three weeks or so here sight-seeing and enjoying photo-ops at American monuments and tourist attractions. Wasteful President Bio added insult to injury. He stayed over after the UNGA and was the last head of state to depart the country , holidaying in an expensive hotel at Washington DC with his mob . Bio did not care. He had free Sierra Leone government money to spend, while his citizens back home were cursing him and languishing in misery, with hardly one square meal to eat. The Public Enemy No. 1 to Sierra Leone’s economic recovery, stability and improvement is none other than President Maada Bio himself. He is an anathema to anything that would steady the economic ship.
