Sierra Leone: Report on Employment and Remuneration Matrices Mission (May 13–24, 2024)

A field-based-work mission to Sierra Leone was conducted in the framework of the Data for Decisions (D4D) Project and the Sierra Leone National Accounts rebasing project. The mission assisted the National Accounts and Economic Statistics Division (NAESD) of Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL) in compiling a final version of the 2018 employment and remuneration matrices (ERM) by economic activity, category of employment, and gender and the estimates for the non-observed activities including the informal activities. The mission also provided training to the staff on the ERM annual series by sharing methodology guidelines and helping with the search of new statistical sources for its compilation. This is the fifth mission to assist on the compilation of the final version of the 2018 ERM following the key recommendations of the System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA). During the fourth mission, which was the first in-person technical assistance conducted in April 2023, a robust but preliminary ERM was completed for 2018. This was used as an input in the Supply and Use Tables (SUT) and in the estimation of the actual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) released for the base year 2018. With the inclusion of the majority of the data that was missing from the labor demand side, the final version of the 2018 ERM was compiled during this mission. In search of new statistical sources, meetings were coordinated, and attended, with four key public institutions: Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL), National Revenue Authority (NRA), National Social Security and Insurance Trust (NASSIT), and Ministry of Finance (MoF). Also, the mission suggested to the authorities that Stats SL consider designing and collecting a permanent/continuous household survey on an annual basis in pursuit of strengthening the country's basic statistics, their quality, and the continuous improvement of national accounts (NA) estimates in the future.