Summary:
- Isaac Doe, a strong supporter of the Congress for Democratic Change, has claimed that the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, for the first time in Liberia’s history, has not published a budget performance report since the end of 2024.
- We have verified this claim by reviewing the Ministry’s official website by checking for budget performance reports from 2018 to 2025
- While the claim is correct that MFDP has not yet published a budget performance report since the end of the 2024 fiscal year, it is not the first time that budget performance reports have not been published.
On May 12, Isaac Doe, a former Youth and Sports Deputy Minister, claimed on Spoon Talk that the Ministry of Finance, for the “first time in Liberia’s history”, has not published a budget performance report since the year ended. He cited the absence of the report on the Ministry’s website as evidence to back his claim.
Doe made the claim at (4:04:10) of the show while discussing the government’s performance regarding the National Budget.
The Claim
Said Doe: “The Ministry of Finance, for the first time in Liberia’s history, five months after the year ended, we have not gotten a budget performance report.”
Rating Justification
The publication of the budget performance report is in accordance with Section 36.4 of the Public Financial Management Act of 2009.
It says, the Minister of Finance shall produce a consolidated quarterly report comparing budget execution and revenue collections to the estimates contained in the National budget. It further states that this report shall be available to the President, the Legislature, and the general public within forty-five days of the end of the quarter.
To verify this claim, we browsed the official website of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and reviewed the publications of budget performance reports since 2018.
The first budget performance report, under the recent past administration, covering the period from July to September 30, 2018, was released on December 27, 2018.
Additionally, two mid-year budget execution reports were published, covering July 1 to December 31, 2019 were published on March 20, 2020, while the second, covering July to December 31, 2020, was published on March 2, 2021.
However, from 2021 to the end of 2023, no further budget performance reports can be seen on the website of the MFDP.
For the current administration, there are only two budget performance reports published on the MFDP website. The first covering the period of January 1 to March 31 was released on May 15, 2024, and the mid-year report covering January 1 to June 30, 2024, was published on August 20, 2024. These reports cover fiscal activities in 2024.
So far, there have been no new budget reports published on the website for the year 2025.
Conclusion
Based on the information gathered, we conclude that while Doe is correct that the Ministry has not yet published a budget performance report since the end of the 2024 fiscal year, his assertion that this is happening for the first time in Liberia’s history is misleading.
There have been instances in previous years where reports were delayed or not published, which is a violation of the timeline set by the Public Financial Management (PFM) law.
Editor’s Note:
The first quarter consolidated budget execution report for FY2025 was published to the MFDP website on MAY 21, 2025 following the production of the fact check report. This action was taken before the publication of this report on our website.
