By Alex Yomah
Despite the incessant public outcry against Liberia’s fiscal manager, the Minister of Finance Development Planning, Samuel D. Tweah, has dispelled claims that the economy under his watch has dwindled, clarifying that the economy is rather rebounding.
Minister Tweah has come under serious criticisms recently from some top officials of the CDC-led government, alleging that Tweah’s fiscal policy is creating hardship for the ordinary citizens, a situation they claimed is undermining this government.
Rep. Moses Acarous Gray is one of those notable stalwarts bent on discrediting Minister Tweah’s fiscal policy scheme and is however urging Tweah to constitute a team of some of the best economists to help in fixing the fading economy under his watchful eyes.
Appearing on the famous 50/50-Talk-show yesterday’s edition, Minister Tweah said in spite of the Ebola and the novel Coronavirus strike which among other things, adversely effected the economy, the status of the economy is economically improving.
Giving an overview of the economic status, Minister Tweah said, “The hope is that the economy is rebounding after a very difficult period and the Liberian people have the right to know where their economy is going.”
He said that the Liberian economy has gone through some of the very toughest times, and Liberians have the right to complain when things are tough, when prices are high and hiked; then they have legitimate claims to demand explanation from their leaders to know the status of the economy.
Explaining reasons for the existing economic challenges, Tweah indicated that beginning with Liberia’s domestic revenue, performance dropped drastically due to epidemic and pandemic coupled with the withdrawal of UNMIL among other factors.
According to him, from 2014 when Ebola hit Liberia, revenue dropped drastically and Liberians felt the pinch and while the economy was reviving between 2018-2019 there were macro shocks and as a result of UNIMIL’s drawdown, the country experienced price- hike, among other affected domestic revenues.
Tweah stated further that the same things that happened during Ebola outbreak, was the same things that happened to the macro economy to decline.
According to him, what the CDC-led government has been doing during 3 years is to revive the economy especially when things started becoming otherwise to turn the economy around, something he said has gained international partner’s recognition.
“Here is the news for Liberia. Without grants and borrowings; Liberia’s domestic revenue performance is improving. We are talking about the taxes people pay and that is the economy; the domestic revenue performance is in millions of dollars-moving upwards by the end of 2020,” Tweah bragged.