Sierra Leone News: President Bio Launches Tender Process on Lungi Bridge

Stephen V Lansana
3 min readJun 20, 2019

--

By Stephen V. Lansana

Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio has on Wednesday June 19, 2019, launched the tender process for the proposed Lungi Bridge at the State House in Freetown. The bridge is estimated a US$2 billion.

President Bio said at the investors conference on infrastructure held at State House that as a Government, we are working to ease the investment landscape right across board and we maintain a long-term view of all investments including infrastructural investments. We desire that each investment yield long term benefits. We desire that each investment trigger off economic activity and growth over the long-term.

Speaking on the tendering process, President Bio said, “We believe that the tender process must be competitive, transparent, corruption-free, and must offer the best value for money. We strongly discourage bribery, kickbacks, red tape, and other murky transactions and practices around infrastructural investments. This government and this country strongly discourage corruption. So it is within this context that we are undertaking all infrastructural projects in this country.”

He disclosed, “I have therefore directed the Office of Presidential Infrastructure Initiatives to be particularly attentive to all the foregoing critical elements in launching the tender process for the Lungi Bridge. I will closely superintend the entire process and ensure that every tender is compliant and every tender is in the best long-term interest of Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans.”

He said his government believes that infrastructural investments should not burden the country with huge debt, adding that they should be financed in a way that the public and future generations are not liable for that debt. “So we are not going to build a bridge or an airport for which the people of Sierra Leone are going to pay back a high interest loan for 10, 20, or 30 years. That simply does not make economic sense,” he said.

President Bio emphasized that each infrastructural investment must be able to pay for itself in 10 to 20 years depending on the financing model that is used.

“Each must also be worth the cost of constructing and maintaining it over its life span. Therefore, each infrastructure investment should be affordable and must be funded without recourse to publicly guaranteed debts,” he added. “We also believe that infrastructural investments must be purposeful. They must unlock tangible economic growth and improve the quality of life of the citizens. In the construction and maintenance phases, there must be real job opportunities and skills training and transfer with implications for real incomes for local Sierra Leoneans. We will insist on that for every infrastructural investment.”

Presidebnt Bio said that investors should look at available infrastructure as a critical factor for making investment decisions and this consideration will drive each infrastructure investment decision we will make. “We also believe that infrastructure investments lead to new businesses and new businesses create more jobs, lead to new settlements or new population centres, create a need for new and more services, and increase overall economic productivity, That, can only be good for our economy,” he said.

“We also believe that we should prioritise infrastructural investment decisions by asking critical questions about feasibility, sustainability, selectivity (Is this investment better and much needed now that the possible alternatives?), and whether it can lead to the development of other sectors of economy– tourism and travel, mining, construction, small-scale manufacturing etc.,” President Bio said.

--

--

Stephen V Lansana
Stephen V Lansana

Written by Stephen V Lansana

Stephen V. Lansana is a Sierra Leonean Journalist who work for Premier News, a subsidiary of Premier Media Group Ltd. Stephen writes on Health & Human Rights

No responses yet