Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone’s Economy Is Still Fragile-Chinese Economic Counselor

Economic Counselor to Sierra Leone from China Mr Shen Xiaokai has said the country’s economy is still fragile and need economic assistance to revamp it and make the people live a better life.
He made these comments during an interview with Awoko to celebrate the 45 years of China-Sierra Leone bilateral relations.
He said Sierra Leone needs economic assistance to improve the country’s economy and its infrastructural development.

“Because of the fragility of the economy, China has decided to continue to support the country through aid and concessional loans so that the country can achieve more success. Since the relationship started in 1971, we have built stadiums, the military HQ, the Jui hospital, schools and in agriculture.”
He said the Minister of Sports has met with him and they are going to repair the Siaka Stevens stadium that was last done 10 years ago. He said the stadium was one of the first projects China did in Sierra Leone and they will not relent but will continue to help in whatever they can.

Mr Shen also averred that the current President’s Recovery Priorities (PRP) is of importance to China as they too are looking at ways they will come in to help the country in this project.
“During the ebola, we were the first to come to the aid of Sierra Leone and we did so much to end the ebola, now that it is over, even though we have other areas we are looking at, we still believe that we must help in our own little way to make the PRP a big success.”
Mr Shen said they are in the concluding stage of the 3,2KM road at Regent to Limkokwing college that they intend to do because they have already finished the Regent-Grafton road, which he said will be instrumental to the Mamamah airport and also to reach the other parts of the country.

“We intend to build a West African Tropical Disease Prevention and Research Centre at Jui that will be the first in the subregion. We will also build a new Ministry of Health building that will house all the different departments and make coordination easier and faster.”
The new Ministry of Health building will be built at New England and the research centre at Jui close to the Jui hospital.
The Economic Counselor also said that the three mini hydro-power in Charlotte, Port Loko and Makali will finish this year and they will produce 6.6 mega watts electricity. He said they have also built two schools in Makeni and Masingbi that will be handed over to the government before the next school year.

Talking about other projects that will help improve the country’s economy, he said China Power has two projects of a 50MW thermal plant and 100MW hydro plant at Mange that they are discussing and there are other projects on the ground that they are working on like the flyover from Spur Road to Juba, agriculture and so on.
Mr Shen said as the two countries celebrate 45 years of such excellent ties, he hopes that both countries will continue to work together to achieve the Chinese Dream and the Agenda for Prosperity.