The Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved an approximately US$210 million Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement for Liberia, which will enable an immediate disbursement US$5.8 million. The approval is to assist Liberian authorities in their reform efforts to address macroeconomic imbalances and establish a foundation for increased private-sector-led growth beyond the natural resource sector.
The 40-month financing package will support the authorities’ Economic Reform Agenda (ARREST) to address macroeconomic imbalances, strengthen debt sustainability, and lay the foundations for higher, more inclusive, and private sector-led growth, beyond the enclave sector. However, before the approval, the Liberian government agreed to live up to several financial policies proffered by the IMF, including reducing unproductive spending, as well as properly managing its monthly wage bill, which directly means upholding the Weah administration’s Harmonization Policy, which was a prerequisite for Liberia to remain on the IMF program.
In its Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP), the UP government agreed to reduce the current wage bill from US$305 million to about US$270 million.
However, the former Minister of Finance and Development Planning, who was heavily criticized and demonized for “slicing” civil servants’ salary, has descended on the Unity Party (UP) government for approving the same policy they demonized to the Liberian people only to obtain vote and power, demanding a public apology for deceiving the Liberian people all these years.
Tweah stated that reducing the wage bill sustains the trends begun under the Harmonization Policy. He explained that between 2019 and 2023 the wage bill declined from 10 percent of GDP to 7.1 percent of GDP, and to take wage to 6.3 percent of GDP means further reduction, which is contrary to “reversing harmonization”, as the Boakai administration insisted on.
According to Tweah, “The UP lied to the Liberian people during the 2023 campaign it was going to reverse harmonization, whatever that phrase is suppose to mean. To reverse harmonization, you have to go back to the very inequitably high salary levels at four or five ministries that harmonization targeted. This means you will be adding more than US$30 million to the wage bill, not trying to reduce it by US$34 million, which is not even possible.
“Harmonization was subjected to propaganda! Some health workers whose salaries were never harmonized were singing, ‘You harmonize our pay we harmonize your vote.’ Now when the dust has settled the government is not even able to give health workers the US$5 million placed in the budget by the CDC government to give them an increase under a new pay scale agreed with them.
“So let it be clear that the UP will not be fulfilling its campaign promise of “reversing harmonization”!
Tweah vowed to aggressively monitor the wage reform to see what changes the UP will effect that is substantially different from reforms undertaken by the CDC. He noted that, so far, the UP government is building on the harmonized wage structure effected by the CDC. “This structure abolished a general allowance system, which was not based on any rules or grade for hiring! The current payroll audit to be implemented under the IMF program is a CDC audit! To reverse harmonization you have to go back to the no-rules system. So far, nothing new has emerged!” he argued.
He said they are waiting to see the remaining 35 percent salary increase for UL instructors, whose salary went up by around 65 percent under the CDC, and are also waiting to see the end of voluntary payroll that the CDC promised several teachers and health workers.
“Let it be known that verification of 6,000 civil servants who are supposed to be ‘ghosts’ and turn out some ‘savings’ are really not ghosts, and this is causing serious problem for the current minister of Finance who cannot make sense of the numbers his people are reporting to him. The promised savings ‘da vlah’, as we say in Liberian parlance, and my advice to the Minister is to do a clean sweep away from the false assumptions and politically motivated work of people before him,” he observed.
He warned that everything cannot be politicize in the country, and called on the UP administration to apologize for the lie on Harmonization and come clean with the Liberian people!