In Summary
-
MPC Political Leader Simeon Freeman claimed that 90% of money collected for Liberia’s national budget is spent on government services, though he did not provide evidence or specify a fiscal year.
-
Our review of the FY2024, FY2025, and FY2026 national budgets found that recurrent spending accounted for 91.2% of the budget in FY2024, about 88% in FY2025, and 76.7% in FY2026.
-
Since recurrent expenditure has varied significantly across the years and was not consistently at 90%, we conclude that Freeman’s claim is partly correct.
Movement for Progressive Change (MPC) Political Leader Simeon Freeman claimed on Punch FM that 90% of the money collected to fund Liberia’s national budget is spent on government services. Mr. Freeman made this claim while discussing government spending and the country’s development challenges.
Fact Check By: Mark Mengonfia | LMEP Fact-checking Grant Fellow
His argument suggested that a large portion of government revenue is consumed by the day-to-day operations of government institutions rather than being invested in infrastructure, social services, and other development projects.
The Claim
Mr. Freeman stated: “It doesn’t make sense to collect all this money, and our people are still poor, 90% of the money collected for the budget is spent on Government services”.
Rating Justification
Although Mr. Freeman did not specify a fiscal year or provide evidence to support his claim, we reviewed the three most recent national budgets for Fiscal Years 2024, 2025, and 2026 to determine the share of total government spending allocated to recurrent expenditures compared with the Public Sector Investment Plan (PSIP).
In Liberia’s national budget, spending on “government services” is often understood as recurrent expenditure, which includes salaries and wages, goods and services, subsidies and grants, debt servicing, and other operational costs required to run government institutions. This is different from development spending, which is largely captured under the Public Sector Investment Plan (PSIP) that finances infrastructure projects, education, health facilities, and other long-term development initiatives.
To verify Mr. Freeman’s claim, we reviewed Liberia’s national budgets for Fiscal Years 2024, 2025, and 2026 to determine the proportion of total government spending allocated to recurrent expenditures compared to public investment and development projects.
Our review found that recurrent expenditures, which cover salaries, government operations, and debt servicing, accounted for a significant share of government spending in all three fiscal years.
In FY2024, recurrent spending accounted for the majority of the national budget, totaling approximately 93%, while recurrent expenditure in the FY2025 budget accounted for nearly 88% of the budget.
However, the FY2026 National Budget reduced the share of recurrent spending to 76.8% of total expenditure, leaving a larger allocation for public sector investment projects and development programs.
These figures show that government spending on recurrent costs has varied across the three years we reviewed and has not consistently been at the 90% level claimed by Freeman.
Conclusion
Based on the available budget data, we conclude that the claim that 90 percent of money collected for the budget is spent on government services is partly correct.
While recurrent expenditures have accounted for a significant share of government spending and have varied across fiscal years, they have not consistently reached the 90% level claimed by Mr. Freeman.
Editor’s Note: This story is produced as part of the Liberia Media Empowerment Project (LMEP) implemented by Internews with funding from the European Union. The funder or partner had no say in the production of this fact-check report
