The President of the Republic of Liberia has alluded to the fact that 2020 was a tough and challenging year for the nation and its citizenry in terms of meeting their financial obligations, but disclosed that the economy is projected to grow by three point two (3.2%) percent, on account of expected growth in all of its major sectors, as well as favorable global developments.
President Weah pointed out that the recovery of the economy will depend on the persistence, or otherwise, of COVID-19. He made the disclosure during his State-of-the-Nation Address to the 54th National Legislature on Monday, January 25, 2021.
This disclosure, observers say, could be the most important information to the general public, some of whom could not even afford to put food on the table for their family during the under review.
It can be recalled that the economy was badly hit in early 2020 when the world announced the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought to halt all international travels and relatively seized the freedom of movement and interaction among the locals. As Liberia imports almost everything, including its staple food, rice, the struggle for survival became imminent.
Worse of all, the government, as the only remedy to curtail the pandemic, announced a state of emergency, restricting everyone to be at home at 3:00 p.m., and during the heights of the disease the nation was hit with monetary shortage: the Liberian dollar and US dollar went far below shortage, causing serious financial crisis, as clients could not get their own money from the banking institutions.
However, the Weah administration was able to contain the virus from widely spreading, as compared to many countries, and worked closely with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to protect the purchasing power of the low-income population by aggressively fighting inflation, which reduced from about thirty (30%) percent at end December 2019 to about twelve (12%) percent at end December 2020.
President Weah attributed this achievement to his administration’s commitment to fiscal discipline and further improvements in cash management, transparency and accountability in spending, and domestic revenue mobilization to finance their development agenda, as was hailed by the IMF recently.
In his SONA, President Weah said, “The year 2020 was challenging for the Liberian economy. Real GDP growth projection was further revised downward to negative three (-3.0%) percent for 2020, from the earlier projection of negative two point five (-2.5%) percent, reflecting a decline in economic activity, largely due to prolonged lockdowns at home, restrictions on international travels, disruptions in supply chains and international trade, and the second wave of the pandemic now seen in several countries, including Liberia’s major trading partners.
“Although the impact of the pandemic on the mining and manufacturing sectors was limited, the service sector, especially the hospitality sub-sector, was severely hit due to the lack of international travelers. “This year, the economy is projected to grow by three point two (3.2%) percent, on account of expected growth in all major sectors of the economy, as well as favorable global developments. But recovery of the economy will depend on the persistence, or otherwise, of COVID-19. However, recent news about production of vaccines for the prevention and treatment of the pandemic is a positive development which will fast track global post-COVID recovery.”