AYV News, February 17, 2025
The Minister of Finance, Sheku Fantamadi Bangura, elected Chairman of the Convergence Council of Ministers and Governors of Central Banks for West Africa Monetary Zone on Friday, 14th February 2025, at Radisson Blu Hotel, Aberdeen Freetown.
In his acceptance speech, he thanked the outgoing Chairman of the Convergence Councils of Ministers and Governors of the Central Bank, the Minister in charge of Finance in Guinea, for his dedication during his tenure as Chairman.
He welcomes his colleagues, Ministers of Finance and Governors of the Central Bank of Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and The Gambia to the 53rd Meeting of the Convergence Council of WAMZ in Freetown.
He noted that the global economic landscape has affected the economies of the sub-region, which has affected the weak growth, higher inflation, shocks from pandemics like COVID-19, the ongoing crises in Europe, geo-political tension and fragmentation has affected our sub-region.
Mr Bangura further stated that despite these shocks and distractions, the Ministry of Finance in Sierra Leone worked very hard to restore macroeconomic stability, with inflation declining to about 13.6%.
He mentioned that in 2024, the situation turned around positively, and according to World Economic Outlook, global growth has remained relatively stable at around 3.2% in the 2024-2025 growth projection, and Sierra Leone is following the trend of 3% and 3.3%.
Sierra Leones’s Minister of Finance further stated despite the enormous effort and the resources that have been invested in the Single Currency Programme in the sub-region, the abilities of member countries to meet all the targets in the Convergence are tasks for all of the member countries and the road to the union is near given the timeline of 2027.
He commended members for putting in place blocks around the payment systems in the sub-region across border bank supervision effort and also putting efforts in building the capital market within the sub-region and macroeconomic management through fiscal harmonisation and the implementing other protocol to foster trade and broad economic integration of ECOWAS protocol and movement of people.
Vice President Dr Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh commits the political will of the Government of Sierra Leone to not only achieve the single currency of the WAMZ Region but also to the full implementation of other economic and trade protocols of ECOWAS to buster region trade and movement of goods and individuals.
He called on member states of WAMZ and ECOWAS to invest in projects that will facilitate trade and economic integrations like Roads, Rails, Sea and Air Transportation, Energy and Technology, sighting the recently launched Instant Payment Switch by the Bank of Sierra Leone that will make transactions seamless.
The Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, Dr Ibrahim Stevens, presented the 50th report of the Committee of Governors, which was deliberated by members of the Council.
