In Summary:
- Robtel Pailey, a Liberian Professor based in the United Kingdom, claimed that Liberia spent 56% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on paying off debt in 2024,
- We have reviewed all the relevant authoritative sources including the budget performance report
- We conclude that she did not get her facts correct. In 2024 Liberia’s debt-to-GDP ratio was about 56%, but the country spent a little over 2% of its GDP on paying debts in the same year.
On February 24, Robtel Pailey, a Liberian professor based in the UK who also served as Liberia’s 177th Independence Day orator, claimed in an ELBC interview that in 2024 the government spent 56% of the country’s GDP on paying off debts.
Madam Pailey made the claims while discussing Liberia’s debt crisis, proposing how the country can move from aid dependency amid current concerns about the USAID shutting down major programs in Liberia.
The Claim
Said Pailey: “In 2024, Liberia spent about 56% of its GDP on paying off debts”.
Rating Justification
GDP, which is the Gross Domestic Product of a country, is the monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country over a period of time.
To fact-check this claim, we reviewed the joint International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s Debt Sustainability Analysis published in September 2024 but we did not find information about Liberia’s debts in 2024.
We then reviewed the 2024 approved national budget, which shows that the debt to GDP ratio was 53.79% but the debt service to GDP ratio was 2.3% while debet service to revenue was 14.7%.
Screenshot showing Liberia’s debt profile for 2024 | Source: 2025 approved Budget, MFDP
This means that in 2024, Liberia’s total public debt compared to its GDP accounted for 53.79% of its GDP, but the amount used to pay off debt in the same year accounted for 2.3% of the country’s GDP.
Also, we reviewed the IMF’s first review of the Extended Credit Facility Arrangement released on February 19, 2025, and we found a chart showing the decomposition of Liberia’s public debt and debt service by creditors from 2023 to 2025.
The chart on page 37 shows that Liberia’s debt to GDP ratio was 56.5% while the debt service to GDP ratio in the same year was 3.3%.
Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform, chart of the national debt in relation to GDP from 2019 and project until 2029 shows that Liberia’s debt to GDP ratio in 2024 was 56.82%.
However, it is important to note that the debt to GDP ratio is the percentage of a country’s total debt compared to its GDP while the debt service to GDP ratio compares the amount used in paying off debts to the country’s GDP.
Conclusion
Based on this, we conclude that Madam Robtel Pailey is incorrect. In 2024, Liberia did not spend 56% of its GDP paying off debts. Though data shows that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio in 2024 was 56.8%, the budget shows that the percentage of the country’s GDP spent on paying off debts in 2024 was 2.3%.
