Leading international economist at the Johns Hopkins University in the United States, Professor Steve Hanke has asserted that the Leone is drastically sliding down and tanking.

He made this assertion on a post shared on Twitter on Wednesday 3 August 2022.

“In SierraLeone, the Leone is on its back foot. Today, I accurately measure inflation in SLE at a punishing 46.14%/yr, ~1.9x the phony official rate. SLE is sliding down, down, down. In short, SLE is tanking,” Professor Hanke tweeted.

In his July inflation dashboard, the Johns Hopkins University Professor ranked the Sierra Leone 13th place out of 17 other nations that are reeling from the economic impacts caused by inflationary pressures on the globe.

Sierra Leone’s inflation rate was measured at 43 percent as of May 2022, which is 18 percent more of the last recorded official inflation rate of 25 percent.

He recently condemned Sierra Leone’s redenomination of the Leone, stating that re-denominated currency will create no change.

Hanke asserted that redenomination is like undergoing plastic surgery, wherein the appearances change, but, in reality, nothing changes.

He further noted that Redenomination will fail as elevated inflation in Sierra Leone persists.

Steve H. Hanke is a professor of applied economics and founder and co-director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Cato’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.