Summary: In his first annual message, President Joseph Boakai stated that the stock of Liberia’s public debt at the end of December 2017 stood at US$878.17 million and was increased by US$1.33 billion to US$2.21 billion in 2023. We have verified his statement and find it to be mostly correct.
President Joseph Boakai, delivering the first State of the Nation Address on Monday January 29, claimed that the current stock of public debt is now $2.21 billion. This, according to him is a net increment of US$1.33 billion since 2017 when it was US$878.17 million — just before the George Weah administration took over.
The Claim
Said President Boakai: “The stock of public debt at End-December 2023 stood at US$2.21 billion, an increase of 8.67 percent compared to end-December 2022 stock of US$2.08 billion. This represents a sharp increase of US$1.33 billion compared to the end of December 2017 stock of US$878.17 million (representing 601.8 percent rise).
Was Liberia’s stock of debt at the end of 2017 put at US$878.17 million when the George Weah administration was preparing to take over?
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we reviewed the Liberian government’s Annual Debt Management Reports prepared by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning and the Annual Reports of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL).
We reviewed page 39 of the CBL’s report and found that the country’s public debt stock at the end of November 2017 was US$874.1 million compared to Boakai’s US$878.17 million claim at the end of December in the same year.
The CBL and MFDP have not published annual reports for 2023; however, LVL Fact Checking Desk obtained the report for 2022 on the country’s debt portfolio as published on the website of the MFDP.
On page 7 of this report, we found the public debt stock at the end of December 2022 to be US$2.03 billion compared to the US$2.08 billion mentioned by President Boakai in his SONA as the public debt stock of Liberia at the end of December 2022.
In addition, the annual report by the Central Bank of Liberia puts the stock of Public Debt at US$2.018 billion at the end of December 2022.
Conclusion
Based on these facts, we conclude that the claim made by President Joseph Boakai about Liberia’s Public Debt portfolio is mostly correct.
In 2017, the country’s public debt stock was at US$874.1 million, this amount increased to US$2.03 billion by the end of 2022 according to the MFDP. We could not verify Liberia’s current debt stock because the CBL and MFDP have not release their annual reports for 2023.
