Liberia has signed a landmark grant agreement of about $52 million dollars with the World Bank to accelerate the government’s response to the Ebola epidemic in the country. 

The new grant is part of the US$200 million Ebola emergency mobilization first announced by the WBG in early August. The WBG said that its new Ebola Emergency Response project mobilized

Liberia's Finance Minister Amara Konneh has disclosed that the government will prosecute people who misapplied funds intended to fight the deadly Ebola virus. In recent days, there has been accusation and counter accusations of officials of government managing funds intended to fight the disease, diverting those funds into their personal use.

The Ministry of Finance and Development Planning wishes to dispel a very malicious and unfounded rumor circulating, that Minister Amara Konneh was tested and diagnosed positive of the deadly Ebola virus and currently in quarantine.
 
This rumor is untrue and has already been dismissed by authorities of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia. The Ministry insists that neither the Minister nor any Ministry officials have been quarantined, as being falsely rumored.

In the wake of the rapid spread of the deadly Ebola virus and the recent untimely death of Mr. Patrick Sawyer, Coordinator of the ECOWAS National Unit at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, having contracted the virus, the Ministry wishes to announce the following measures to ensure public safety and instill confidence in users of services at the Ministry.
 
At the very highest level of the Ministry, all senior officials coming in direct or indirect contact with Mr. Sawyer have been placed on the prescribed 21 days observatory surveillance period starting July 20th, the day Mr. Sawyer departed the country for Nigeria.

Monrovia July 7, 2014 – Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, former Prime Minister of Niger and Chief Executive Officer of the NEPAD Agency, was on Friday, July 4th, 2014 installed as Interim Chief Executive Officer of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Secretariat, succeeding Mr. Assefa Shifa who held the post ad interim since 2008.

Presiding over the handover ceremony was Hon. Amara M. Konneh, Liberia’s Acting Minister of Finance and Development Planning and Chair of the Committee of APRM Focal Points, which directs the administration of the Mechanism.

Minister Amara Konneh maintains that Liberia continues to make progress in improving the educational sector but that such feat remains slow and expenditure in the sector poorly prioritized. He warns: “We need to change that.”

According to Minister Konneh, the share of total spending on education in the national budget is low, at around 12%, although donors provide over half of spending in the sector.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is calling on the Board of Governors of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) to open up capital portfolio to non-regional members and other institutional investors in the face of the slow payments of capital by regional members.

“The admission of non-regional members will enable EBID to contribute to the economic and social development of Member States through low interest loans,” the Liberian leader suggested adding, “With a larger membership, the Bank will be endowed with greater expertise, and the credibility of its partners would allow it to have access to the markets of non-regional Member States.”

Finance Ministers from the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS are converging on Monrovia for the convening of the 12th Ordinary Meeting of the Board of Governors of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development.

The one day summit, expected to attract fifteen Ministers of Finance or the proxies will take place on Monday, June 16th at the Royal Hotel in Sinkor, Monrovia.

The Ministry of Finance is gravely concerned and disappointed with the New Republic Newspaper’s Tuesday, May 27, 2014 publication captioned: ‘’Liberia’s is doomed”, in which the paper attributed its story to Finance Minister Amara Konneh, suggesting that the Liberian economy was doomed.

The Ministry wants to state emphatically that at no time did Finance Minister Amara Konneh make such statement to the effect that the country was doomed due to the absence of new economic policy that will rescue the perishing and vulnerable economy in the country.

The Ministry of Finance has noted that some Ministries and Agencies may be committing the Government in Contractual obligations which are in excess of the appropriations authorized by the Legislature or without proper observation of the established procurement process, in contravention of the law.

Dispatch from Washington DC

Finance Minister Amara Konneh and delegation at the ongoing Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have held constructive country-level discussions with the Bank’s Vice President for Africa Maktar Diop on support for the Liberia’s development agenda, the Agenda for Transformation (AfT). 

The meeting with Mr. Diop, former Finance and Economy Minister of Senegal, centered on addressing bottlenecks affecting Liberia’s portfolio performance and disbursement rate under the International Development Association (IDA) financing arrangement on key projects, including support to the health sector, direct budget support and financing of the Red Light to Ganta-Guinea Border Road Project.

Monrovia, April 6, 2014: Finance Minister Amara Konneh will lead Liberia’s delegation to this year’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) in Washington DC, USA.

Among the primary events covering the preparation of the FY2014-2015 National Budget is the budget hearings, where the Ministries, Agencies and Commissions (MACs) present and justify their budget requests at the Ministry of Finance.