On Thursday 19 January, the Minister of Mineral Resources Hon. A. M. Mansaray launched the GoSL Online Repository at the National Stadium, Freetown. The GoSL Online Repository, providing the public with full access to all industrial mineral licenses and pyaments made to governement. The repository also contains all exporters licenses and related payments, and is planned to include timber licenses later in 2012.

The Honourable Minister Alhaji Minkailu Mansaray announced “Madam Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to launch a solid tool of transparency that is crucial to fiscal good governance, and will prove very useful for stakeholders, researcher, investors and indeed the people of Sierra Leone. As a country we are very proud to be among only a handful of countries around the world that operate the system we are about to launch.”

The Revenue Development Foundation signed an agreement with FAO today, starting the pilot phase of the IFAS project signed with the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security in February 2010. The funding is from with the European Commission’s ACP-FLEGT Programme.

The project implementation started immediately, with a technical assessment currently underway.