Liberia: Ngafuan Says U.S.$1 Billion Tax Haul Spent, Braces for U.S.$200m Gap

MONROVIA — Finance Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan says Liberia's record $1 billion in tax collections this year is already spent, not sitting in a government account, funding new soldiers, early salary payments and long-overdue debts to local banks and media houses. But about $200 million of that total, roughly a fifth, came from a one-time mining payment that will not repeat in 2027, and Ngafuan himself told listeners Thursday the government is already bracing for the gap it will leave behind.

Ngafuan made the case on OK Morning Rush on OKFM 99.5, a day after marking two years since he returned to the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning on Sept. 16, 2024, leaving a post managing a $2.2 billion portfolio for the African Development Bank in Uganda. The interview came as public reaction to the billion-dollar announcement, which President Joseph Boakai delivered in a national address last week, has split sharply between official celebration and street-level doubt about whether ordinary Liberians will feel any difference.

The money already spent

Pressed on where the money actually went, since Liberia does not have $1 billion sitting anywhere, Ngafuan compared the government's books to a household budget in which income is deposited and spent continuously rather than banked. "It is raised and it is spent. It is raised and it is spent. It is raised and it is spent," he said. He said the government's own bank balance on any given day is a small fraction of what it collects over a year, likely no more than $50 million.

He pointed to specific uses: recruitment of 600 soldiers now training at the barracks, a diagnostic testing center nearing completion, the ability to pay July salaries before the fifth of the month, and the clearing of what he called accumulated media debt owed by government. He also cited road paving linking St. Paul's Bridge to Bo-Waterside and a corridor running from Menekoma through Foya and Kolahun to Vonjama, financed through a public-private partnership to which he said the government has contributed at least $50 million from this year's budget.

The billion dollars he was defending is not the same figure as the $1.3 billion Liberian budget that has also drawn attention this year, though the two are related. Ngafuan said the government crossed $1 billion in domestic revenue collections between January and Sept. 14. That collection feeds a fiscal year 2026 budget that began as a $1.2 billion draft, was raised by the Legislature to $1.249 billion, and was later supplemented to roughly $1.3 billion after revenue came in above projections, he said, an account that matches figures published by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning.

A windfall that will not repeat

Minister Ngafuan told listeners that a $200 million payment tied to the mining sector helped push this year's revenue past the threshold and will not recur, leaving the government to start next year's budget process facing what he called a $200 million gap, which he said he is confident growth will close or exceed. Independent budget analysis puts that concession payment at close to 16 percent of the original enacted budget; stripped out, this year's domestic revenue collection would land closer to the roughly $848 million Liberia raised in 2025, meaning the underlying, repeatable growth in the tax base is real but considerably smaller than the headline number suggests.

Ngafuan was also asked about a separate skeptical claim that the government budgeted $400 million for debt payments in 2025 and 2026 but has borrowed more than that amount. He did not dispute the figure directly, instead arguing that debt itself is neutral and that what matters is whether it funds productive investment, citing World Bank financing for paving the road from Tapita to Zwedru as an example. He said this year's budget includes $235 million in debt service, of which $90 million goes toward clearing government arrears with commercial banks, which he argued should ease the non-performing loan problem that has kept interest rates high for private borrowers.

The gap between the announcement and the street

Street vendors interviewed separately by The Liberian Investigator in Monrovia and Paynesville after Boakai's address questioned whether the record collection has reached them at all. "Who are they giving the $1 billion to??" Edith Wilson, a vendor at Parker Paint Junction, asked, saying conditions feel unchanged from years when the national budget stood in the hundreds of millions. Marketers interviewed separately described a related complaint: even as the Liberian dollar has strengthened against the US dollar in recent weeks, some foreign-owned stores are demanding a higher exchange rate than the official one before accepting US currency, so the benefit of a stronger local currency is not reaching customers at the till.

One caller, who identified himself as Peter Lynn, told Ngafuan the government appeared to be using the new revenue mainly to pay its own workforce, while market prices stayed high despite a falling exchange rate. The minister did not get the chance to respond to that specific challenge before the segment moved on. A separate listener, describing himself as a nine-year employee of the Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency earning just over $150 a month, asked why a salary increase Ngafuan had promised on another program late last year has not reached him. Ngafuan said individual agencies decide, in coordination with the Civil Service Agency, which employees receive raises first, and that LDEA remains a priority for future increments even if not everyone has benefited yet.

Ngafuan said a committee reviewing the broader civil service salary structure, which he said the Civil Service Agency's director-general is leading, is expected to report by the end of October. He was firm that no announcement would come before the funding is confirmed. "We are not going to budget frustration. We're going to budget joy," he said.

Whether that promise holds will depend on whether Liberia can replace the one-time payment Ngafuan says has already been spent with revenue growth that does not depend on a single mining transaction repeating itself.

Read the original article on Liberian Investigator.