james d rogers : accountability, transparency and governance in sierra leone keynote address and statement by dr james d rogers, governor of the bank of sierra leone, at the second audit risk and governance africa conference, zanzibar, tanzania, 17 - 20 july 2007. * * * mr chairman, conference organisers, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, i wish firstly to thank the conference organisers for their kind invitation to deliver the keynote address at this conference on this very topical and important subject. my remarks will be in six parts. after an introduction, the first part will consider the meaning and scope of accountability, transparency and governance. the second part will examine the relationship between governance and development. part three will present aspects of governance in sierra leone. this will be followed by general remarks in part four. part five concludes. introduction accountability and transparency have occupied a very high lead in discussions of state management. hardly would a speech be delivered, at domestic or international gatherings, articles written, in the popular press or in professional and academic journals, on issues of state management, without at least an allusion to, if not an extensive treatment of, these concepts. indeed, serious examination of these concepts takes us into the complexities of governance, aid conditionalities and effectiveness, international economic cooperation, sovereignty of developing countries, economic development, achievement of the millennium development goals, and associated issues. it is within the context of these considerations that a fuller analysis and understanding of these concepts can be obtained. this, however, is a very wide agenda. there is an extensive and growing literature giving varying perspectives on the subject, and one can only be selective in the examination of the issues. meaning and scope accountability and transparency are major pillars in the architecture of governance. while governance itself is not uniquely defined in its various uses, as we shall discuss shortly, most definitions of the term implicitly or explicitly embrace the principles of accountability and transparency. many examples can be cited in support of this position. a typical example of this is provided by paul wolfowitz, former president of the world bank, who in a 2006 speech in jakarta stated as follows : in the last half - century, we have developed a better understanding of what helps governments function effectively and achieve economic progress. in the development community, we have a phrase for it. we call it good governance. it is essentially the combination of transparent and accountable institutions ; strong skills and competence, and a fundamental willingness to do the right thing. governance itself is not a new phenomenon.

etc that is capable, in its own right, of owning assets, incurring liabilities, and engaging in economic activities and in transactions with other entities. residence is defined as a country ’ s “ economic territory ” which consists of a geographical territory administered by a government and includes, for maritime countries, any islands subject to the same fiscal and monetary authorities as the mainland. however, international ( multilateral ) organizations are not considered residents of any national economy in which the organizations are located, although employees of those bodies are residents of the national economy. in the same vein, the residence of offshore enterprises is attributed to the economies in which they are located. principle of ownership ( time of recording ) the principle of ownership stipulates that the creditor owns a claim on the debtor, and the debtor has an obligation to the creditor. transactions are recorded when economic value is created, transformed, exchanged, transferred, or extinguished. for example, loan drawings are entered in the accounts when actual disbursements are made, and financial claims are established, and not necessarily when an agreement is signed. accrued interest liability in order to maintain inter - temporal and inter - country comparability of external debt statistics, and to identify the variation introduced by the timing of recording of interest costs that have accrued and are not yet payable, such accrued costs must be included in the gross external debt position. with respect to bonds, the difference between the issue price and face value or redemption value is treated as accrued interest over the life of the bond. arrears when principal or interest payments are not made when due, arrears are created, but are recorded under other debt liabilities. but the debt statistics compiler should ensure that the debt is not counted twice by understanding and applying the principle of recording arrears. otherwise the magnitude of the debt burden would be over stated. valuation the principle of valuation states that the nominal value of a debt instrument reflects the value of the debt at creation ; any subsequent economic flows, such as transactions ( e. g. repayment of principal ) ; valuation changes including exchange rate and other valuation changes other than market price changes. nonetheless, the compiler must be cognizant of the fact that, among others, the nominal value of a debt instrument could be less than originally advanced ( face value ) if there have been repayments of principal, debt forgiveness, other economic flows, such as indexation. on the other hand, the