Sierra Leone 2009 GDP growth seen 4 pct: finance minister

By Carolyn Cohn and Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - Sierra Leone's economy is likely to grow by around 4 percent in 2009, its finance minister said on Wednesday, as the country started a two-day conference to attract international investors and donors.

A downturn in global economic growth has hit the diamond-rich nation, finance minister Samura Kamara told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

"We had projected (gross domestic product growth) somewhere between 5 and 6 percent, we are now scaling back to 4 percent for 2009 because of the (global) crisis. Hopefully we are climbing back to 5-6 percent next year."

Government officials, including President Ernest Bai Koroma, were in London to promote Sierra Leone, looking to attract investors in sectors including agriculture and tourism.

Sierra Leone emerged in 2002 from a decade of civil war that killed 50,000 people. Koroma's election in Sept 2007 was hailed as a democratic success.

Kamara said inflation would be around 9 percent in 2009.

"We had actually gone as far down as 3-4 percent before the crisis, until rice, fuel prices went up," he said.

"Hopefully we should be going to 6-7 percent in the next year."