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Prominent female politician of the main opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden, has called on Parliament to swiftly intervene and assist the Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone from sending the country’s financial transactional sector into chaos.
Blyden was reacting after the Bank Governor, Professor Kelfala Kallon, yesterday August 12th 2021, issued a signed public notice in which he is claiming, he has powers under Section 30 of the Bank of Sierra Leone Act of 2019 to “knock off zeros” from printed currencies, re-print new currencies without the zeros on them and still call the re-denominated currencies as Leones.
Dr. Blyden has called on the Governor to please check the full Bank of Sierra Leone Act of 2019 especially Sections like Section 26.
She says if the Governor reads and understands the full Act, he will understand how much he lacks the powers to re-denominate the current Leones currency without prior amendment of Sections of the 2019 Act by Parliament.
Dr. Blyden said the Public Notice also had some inanity.
“Apart from the apparent inanity in some of the contents of the Public Notice, the glaring lack of understanding by Governor Kallon that he needs Parliamentary approvals to re-denominate currencies, is a very serious cause for concern. This singular proposed act of illegality can throw the whole financial sector of Sierra Leone into a complete chaos,” Dr. Blyden alarmed.
“For example, what will be the prefix used to denote the new currencies in future documents and transactions? Will it still be “Le” or will it now have to be a new denotation like “NLe” on documents citing the new currency? Clearly, the prefix cannot be a mere “Le” so it means Section 26 of the Banking Act will have to be amended to reflect the new currency prefix. So for the Bank Governor to issue that Public Notice without any recourse to Parliament is disastrous. It is an embarrassment and Parliament should call him to order immediately,” Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden said.
Blyden also expressed the hope that the report that the proposed re-denominated currencies had already been sent to be printed with a description of Leones still on them was “extra alarming”.
She urged Parliament to reconvene swiftly and save the country from the chaos that will ensue if the new currency notes are printed as “Leones” instead of a distinctively different “New Leones”.
Supporters of the Bank Governor tell this newspapers that he has powers to re-denominate without recourse to Parliament but they don’t show which Section gives him such powers. The Section 30, that is cited by the governor’s Public Notice, only gives powers to the Governor to put out notes into circulation and withdraw such notes from circulation. It does not give him powers to knock off zeros from printed currencies and still call them as if they are the same Leones.
