Meet the New Financial Secretary, Matthew Dingie
Mr Matthew Dingie is the newly appointed Financial Secretary at the Ministry of Finance and principal adviser on economic and financial policies to the Minister of Finance and the Government. He is a career Civil Servant with an outstanding service record to the Government and people of Sierra Leone.
Mr Dingie started his career in the private sector as an Accountant Trainee at PKF Chartered Accountants in August 2000, and later that same year moved to KPMG Chartered Accountants, where he served as a member of audit teams assigned to carry out audits and other financial advisory services to various private and public sector Institutions.
He joined the Civil Service in February 2002 as a Budget Analyst Budget Bureau in the Ministry of Finance, where he worked as a consultant under the World Bank PSMS II project, later funded by the Department for International Development (DFID/UK). He was instrumental in preparing the annual budgetary estimates for the Government of Sierra Leone and the quarterly Fiscal/Budget Monitoring Tables and Reports.
Mr Dingie was appointed Director of Budget in the Ministry of Finance in September 2007, a position he served effectively for over ten years. Because of his outstanding performance, he was promoted to Principal Deputy Financial Secretary in April 2018, a position he held until the President, Dr Julius Maada Bio, appointed him to serve as Financial Secretary in July 2023.
During his ten years as Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance, Mr Matthew Dingie led the preparation, approval and execution of 13 annual and three supplementary budgets for the Government of Sierra Leone and the migration from line-item budgeting to an Activity Based Budgeting System in 2014.
As Principal Deputy Financial Secretary, he also led and contributed to many economic and financial reforms of the Government of Sierra Leone.
Mr Matthew Dingie holds a Master of Arts degree in Economics from the University Of Toledo, Ohio, USA and a First Class Bachelor of Social Sciences (Hons) in Accounting and Finance degree from Fourah Bay College, USL. He joined the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA), UK and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sierra Leone (ICASL) in June 2005. In June 2010, He was admitted as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (FCCA), UK.