By Saio Marrah
The Director General of Sierra Leone Local Content Agency, Fodeba Dabo, has applauded the Government’s move to set the threshold of 500 Million Old Leones and above yearly turnover for businesses that are to pay Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Before this latest directive which would be welcomed, businesses with a yearly turnover of 100 Million Old Leones and above were subjected to paying the GST.
Dabo told a News Conference at the agency’s head office in Freetown, Wednesday 22 November 2023, that the move by the Ministry of Finance is captured in the 2024 Finance Act.
“This will reduce the tax burden on our small businesses,” he added.
According to him, the latest happening is among key reforms in the Act aimed at promoting, protecting, and empowering local businesses and local content in the country.
Among those reforms, he said is the placement of a five percent tax on the importation of rice, cement, and Iron rods into the country.
He assured that there would be no gap in the supply chain, which he said is the concern of many cynics.
He also noted that the initiative is about giving breathing space to small businesses in the country as local content will create employment, boost the economy of the country, and ensure the production of cheaper goods as compared to those imported.
Dabo said the agency’s act allows the institution’s partnership with multinational businesses to ensure jobs are created by locals.
“Our goal is to make this economy a local content economy and it starts here for economic growth and development. We want to have a transformed economy; a vision we have set ourselves for,” he noted.
Dabo pointed out that the reviewed GST is an indication that the government listens to the cries of local entrepreneurs.
He said eighty percent of businesses the agency is working with are of small scale, most of which are into agriculture.
The Cooperate Affairs Manager of Sierra Leone Brewery Limited, Foday
Daboh, in his statement, thanked the government for listening to the concerns of local businesses and assured of his company’s continued compliance with provisions of the Act.
He disclosed that the company will start exporting its products to other countries in the sub-region.
He said the majority of their raw materials are locally produced, cheaper, and healthier as compared to the imported products.
He pointed out that ninety- nine percent of employees of the company are Sierra Leonean, and called on citizens to invest in the entity.
The introduction of the one hundred million Leones (100,000,000) threshold from the initial threshold of three hundred and fifty million Leones (350,000,000) early this year led to protests by business people especially in Freetown, saying that the tax will affect their small businesses.
“His excellency, the recent confrontations you saw had to do with the GST which was moved from three hundred and fifty million Leones to 100 million Leones which every trader on the street saw will soon affect them. We want you to use your good office since parliament has passed it as a law to look into it and see that businesses will collapse if the threshold is brought down to 100 million Leones,” said Rashid Conteh representing the Sierra Leone Importers Union at a stakeholder engagement at State House in April this year.
This led to the intervention of President Julius Maada Bio who assured the business community that the government would go back to the drawing board to look into the concerns raised.
Copyright (c) 2023 Politico (24/11/23)
