Monrovia – Liberia’s Finance Minister Samuel Tweah recently claimed that the country’s reserves in months of import have increased from three months of imports in 2017 to 4.2 months of imports.
Appearing on Spoon Talk on November 8, the Minister said that “when the President [George Weah] took over, Madam Sirleaf [former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf] left three months of imports; we are now at 4.2 months of import”.
What is ‘Months of imports’?
According to Trading Economics, a country reserves in months of import is the number of months of imports of goods and services that a country reserves could pay for. It measures the number of months of money available in the national bank to cover the cost of imports. This means the more the total Months of imports, the larger the reserves.
What did we Find?
A careful review of the World Bank data revealed that Liberia’s total reserve in months of import in 2017 was at 4.727 months, which declined a bit to 4.709 months in 2018 and in 2019 experienced a further decline to 4.319 months.
Trading Economy, which has data on Liberia’s reserve in months of import from 2009 – 2019, also show that the country’s months of import experienced decline between 2017 – 2019.
It is important to note that the Finance Minister Tweah’s claim that the government took Liberia reserves in months of import from 3 months to 4.2 months of import is not corroborated by any data made available by either the IMF of the World Bank as stated above in this report.
Conclusion
Based on research of data from both the World Bank and the IMF, we found the claim made by Liberia’s Minister of Finance and Development Planning to be incorrect.