Liberia’s Finance and Development Planning Minister, Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan has revealed that the country’s economy is expected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2025, from a forecast of 5.1 percent in 2024.
Minister Ngafuan made this disclosure on Tuesday, November 19, at the Ministry of Information Cultural Affairs, and Tourism’s regular press conference in Monrovia.
“The Liberian economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2025, up from a forecast of 5.1 percent in 2024.”
Minister Ngafuan has attributed the 2025 projections to strong performances in the mining and panning sector, with 8.5 percent, the manufacturing sector with 6.9 percent, the agriculture and fisheries sectors with 5.8 percent, and the services sector with 5.0 percent.
Top contributors to the country’s 2025 GDP, he adds, will be the services sector and the agriculture and fisheries sectors which will account for 38 percent, and 29 percent, and the mining sector will account for 19.2 percent, while the forestry sector at about 8 percent and manufacturing at 6 percent respectively.
According to Minister Ngafuan, the 2025 budget of $851.8 million represents an “increase” of $112.9 million or 15.3% over the 2024 Recast budget of 738.9 million.
“As significant as this jump may seem, we are the first to concede that it does not address all the development ambitions and challenges of Spending Entities and our people, especially because the resource requests for 2025 of Spending Entities amount to roughly $2 billion”, Minister Ngafuan stressed.
The Liberian finance minister said that funds have been allocated in the draft FY 2025 budget to add at least $225 beginning January 2025 to the salaries of specialist doctors in the health sector “who are being paid below” their pay grades as the first action in the direction of the Liberian government fully regularizing their salaries.
Another measure the minister revealed would be to adjust the salaries of an additional number of employees. This measure, he says, will result in a monthly salary increase of between $25 and $50. Nurses, midwives, and physician assistants will receive $50 salary top-ups per month while other health workers will receive an increase ranging from $25 to $40 based on their levels.
On the budget submission, Minister Ngafuan noted that the submission was done pursuant to Section 17.1 of the 2019 Amendment and Restatement of the Liberian Public Financial Management Act of 2009.
Ngafuan pointed out that the total revenue envelope of the Draft National Budget for FY2025 is projected at $851. 8 million, comprising Core Revenue of $833 million or 97.8% and Contingent Revenue of 18.8 million or 2.2%. Of this amount, Domestic Revenue constitutes $791.76 million or 93 percent of the total envelope. This, he indicated, includes Tax Revenue of $633.72 million or 80 percent of domestic revenue and non-tax Revenue of $138.5 million or 17.4 percent.
Public Sector Investment Program (PSIP) expenditure is expected to increase from $67.4 million in FY2024 to $98 million in FY2025, thus representing a 54 percent increase.
“As a result, the ratio of PSIP expenditure to the overall budget will expand from 9 percent in FY2024 to 12 percent in FY2025”, Minister Ngafuan noted.
About eighty-six percent of PSIP allocations totaling $87 million are dedicated to multi-sector projects under the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID), the government’s development plan for 2025-2029, which will be launched in the next few weeks.
Moreover, external resources, he said, amount to $60 million, or 7.0 percent of the total revenue envelope, to be sourced from the World Bank $40 million and the European Union $20 million, adding that it represents a 50 percent increase in external resources from FY2024.
