Consulting Services for a Firm to Rollout the Municipal Property Tax System (MPTS) in Bo and Koidu New Sembehun City Councils Reference No .: SL-MOF-550138-CS-QCBS I.0 BACKGROUND The Government of Si…

Summary

GOVERNMENT OF SIERRA LEONE MINISTRY OF FINANCE REQUEST FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST (CONSULTING SERVICES – FIRMS SELECTION) Country: Sierra Leone Name of Project: Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project - RUSLP Grant No.: IDA-D8420 Project ID: 168608 Date of Issue: 20th May 2026 Assignment Title: Consulting Services for a Firm to Rollout the Municipal Property Tax System (MPTS) in Bo and Koidu New Sembehun City Councils Reference No .: SL-MOF-550138-CS-QCBS I.0 BACKGROUND The Government of Sierra Leone, through the Ministry of Finance (MOF), is implementing the Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project (RUSLP) to improve urban management, strengthen service delivery, and enhance disaster preparedness in key urban centers. The project is financed by a US$50 million IDA grant and US$6.73 million GEF co-financing . To ensure strong alignment with decentralization reforms, the Project Management Unit is housed within the Fiscal Decentralization Division (FDD). RUSLP supports the Western Area and all six secondary cities, as well as central government institutions responsible for land management, local governance, and environmental resilience. The project development objective (PDO) of the RUSLP is to “improve integrated urban management, service delivery, and disaster emergency management in Western Area and secondary cities of Sierra Leone”. The PDO will be achieved through the following three main components: (1) Institutional Capacity Development in Integrated Urban Management; (2) Resilient Municipal Infrastructure Investment and Urban Greening; and (3) Emergency Management Institutional and Capacity Development. Component 1 has the following two subcomponents: a. Strengthening Integrated Urban Planning and Spatial data Infrastructure; and b. Upgrading Urban Property Tax Administration and System. A core element of the support under subcomponent 1b is the modernization of municipal property tax administration , which remains the most viable and predictable source of own-source revenue (OSR) for local councils and is essential for funding urban services. Historically, property tax administration relied on outdated cadastres, manual processes, and limited digital systems. To address these constraints, the World Bank, under the RUSLP, is supporting the Government in upgrading the Municipal Property Tax System (MPTS) , an integrated platform combining: MOPTAX 2.0 (a mobile/web-based property tax software), The Central Government Monitoring and Reporting System (CGMRS) , and Integration with the council’s upgrade web-based accounting software, PFM Smart, through the X-Road platform. The first deployment of the upgraded system took place in Kenema City Council (KCC) , where the pilot demonstrated clear gains in property discovery, valuation accuracy, billing efficiency, and digital payments. The experience confirmed the feasibility of scaling the system nationally. Building on this momentum, the Government now intends to roll out the integrated MPTS in Bo City Council (BCC) and Koidu New Sembehun City Council (KNSCC) as the next step in the national rollout. These councils are priority locations due to their rapid growth and readiness for reform. Successful deployment in Bo and Koidu will broaden the national tax base, strengthen fiscal autonomy, and improve service delivery while laying the foundation for extending the system to all 22 local councils. This assignment will be delivered by a Consulting Firm in fifteen months through a close collaboration with Baloosoft (the developers of MOPTAX and CGMRS), MOF (through its Fiscal Decentralisation Division – FDD), Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs (MLGCA), the two beneficiary councils, and relevant ministries. The implementation will draw on lessons learnt by the World Bank, MOF, MLGCA, and Baloosoft from Kenema and earlier reforms in Freetown and Makeni. The rollout is central to achieving RUSLP’s development objective of improving integrated urban management