Summary: Former Finance Minister and now Senator of Gbarpolu County Amara Konneh claims that in 2012 the percentage of national budget spent on development was at 7% and that he took it to 40% in 2016 [as Minister of Finance and Development planning] but now it’s at 18%. We have checked and found that Mr. Konneh did not get all of his facts correct.
On the first sitting of the Liberian Senate on January 16, Gbarpolu County newly elected Senator Amara Konneh made a short remark focusing on what he said were “solutions” to Liberia’s development challenges.
The Gbarpolu County senator began by calling for electoral reforms, while claiming that Liberia’s population is “officially 3.3 million” although the Liberia Institute for Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS) provisional 2022 census result released in February 2023 puts the country’s population at 5.2 million.
The Claim
Mr. Konneh exact words were: “When I took over as Minister of Finance in February 2012, the share of programs or development or projects in the budget was 7%, by 2016 it had gone to 40%, and today it’s at 18%”.
In essence, Mr. Konneh is claiming that when he began Finance Miniter in 2012 the share of the national budget that was being spent on development was 7%, but by the time he was leaving the ministry in 2016, development had received 40% of the budget but this percentage has fallen to 18% today.
Rating Justification
To fact check this claim, we first search and found that the Gbarpolu County senator became Minister of Finance in February 2012 and resigned in April 2016.
As Minister of Finance, in February 2012, Mr. Konneh met the Fiscal Year budget 2011/2012, which ran from July 2011 to June 2012, at five hundred sixteen million, four hundred thirty thousand United States dollars (US$ 516, 430, 000).
Out of that amount, development or projects received a share of forty-three million one hundred ninety-one thousand four hundred sixty-four thousand United States dollars (US$ 43,191,464). This is 8.3% of the total budget.
In 2016, when Mr. Konneh resigned as Minister of Finance the national budget was at six hundred twenty-two million seven hundred forty thousand United States dollars (US$ 622, 740, 000). The Public Sector Investment Plan, which is the share of the budget that goes to development projects or programs, received one hundred seven million eight hundred thousand United States dollars (US$107,800,000) or 17.3% of the total budget.
In the 2023 budget, Public Sector Investment Plan received one hundred forty-eight million fifty thousand United States dollars (US$148,050,000) accounting for 18.91% of the total budget of US$782.94 million for fiscal year 2023.
Conclusion
Based on these facts, we therefore conclude that the claim made by Gbarpolu County Senator Amara Konneh that when he took over as Minister of Finance in 2012 the share of the national budget that went to development was at 7% and in 2016 it went to 40% is incorrect. He is however mostly correct that the share of development in the budget today is at 18%.
In 2012 when Mr. Konneh took over as Minister of Finance, the percentage of the budget that went to development was at 8.36% and when he resigned as minister in 2016 only 17.3% of the budget was being spent on development and not 40% as he claims.
Today, in the most current approved budget, which is for fiscal year 2023, development receives 18.91%. The draft budget for fiscal year 2024 has been submitted to the legislature and only 5% of that budget has been proposed for Public Sector Investment Plan.