I have read with keen interest senator Konneh’s statement on the FY2026 Budget, and I have realized that it is a masterclass in selective vision: eloquent on what he wishes to see, silent on what he prefers to ignore. Before discussing alignment, priorities, or projections, he must first confront the most revealing omission in his critique: the one-line item he never mentioned, public debt service.
But the omissions do not end there. Beyond what the Senator chose not to say about debt, there is also what he chose not to say about his own institution, the Legislature. After bypassing debt service entirely, the Senator then lumps the Judiciary and the security sector together to argue that these institutions are expanding too quickly, yet he says nothing about the Legislature’s own budget, which stands at US$51 million for just 103 individuals. Meanwhile, the Judiciary, an institution that operates in every county, receives a modest increase to renovate courts, pay its staff fairly, and strengthen the rule of law. Why criticize the Judiciary but not the Legislature? Alignment should begin at home. When Senator Konneh calls for realigning the budget with the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development, perhaps we should begin where alignment is most desperately needed; the National Legislature itself.
This pattern of omission continues. The Senator inadvertently ignores that the very structural issues he highlights, such as energy and road connectivity, are precisely what this government is addressing as constraints to inclusive growth. That is why this budget allocates 50 percent of the ArcelorMittal Liberia signature bonus (US$200 million) to the two core constraints to growth: energy and roads. The FY2026 budget allocates US$50 million from the ArcelorMittal bonus to roads, including the St. Paul Bridge to Bo-Waterside corridor, and US$50 million to electricity through LEC smart metering. These allocations exclude the US$58 million for other road works to be implemented by the Ministry of Public Works. These are not competing priorities with health and education. They are the enabling conditions that make health and education delivery possible.
In this context, to critique infrastructure spending without acknowledging its multiplier effects across health, education, agriculture, commerce, and access to finance is to fundamentally misunderstand how development works. This government is managing a budget constrained by past recklessness, bound by legal debt obligations, and calibrated to address the structural deficits, including roads, energy, and institutional capacity, that have held Liberia back for decades.
Which brings us back to the elephant in the committee room: the debt obligations the Senator never mentioned. In the FY2026 Budget, public debt service alone costs US$230 million, nearly 24.5 percent of all core domestic revenue. In any serious budget, that is not just a line item. It is a sector in its own right. Yet the Senator, a former Finance Minister, says nothing about it. This silence is self-telling, because acknowledging debt service, which accounts for 24.5 percent of core domestic revenue, would require him to reckon with an uncomfortable truth: we are still paying for the reckless fiscal mismanagement of the CDC administration that the Unity Party Government must now clean up.
The GAC FY2023 Audit lays out the story without poetry. The previous administration borrowed US$50.2 million and US$32.85 million from the Central Bank of Liberia through a non-transparent and procedurally flawed process. This was a direct violation of Section 46.2 of the CBL Act. The CDC contracted these loans, and the current government had to renegotiate them downward, yet we still must pay US$16 million every year to service this illegal burden in FY2025, with the same amount budgeted for FY2026. The borrowing was not for development; it occurred because the CDC administration had so severely weakened revenue-generation capacity that it could no longer meet the most basic obligation of government: paying its own workers.
While Senator Konneh now warns about fiscal sustainability, he avoids the very debt obligations that are choking fiscal space today. Recognizing those obligations would mean acknowledging their origin, and acknowledging their origin would expose why the FY2026 Budget has no choice but to devote almost a quarter of domestic resources to debt repayment. We are repaying yesterday’s irresponsibility to create tomorrow’s credibility.
And that credibility delivers tangible results that every Liberian can see and feel. Today, Liberians and government workers can walk into banks and access their own money without long queues and without facing a liquidity crisis, because this government restored liquidity and is cleaning up arrears in the banking sector. Debt service is not just a bookkeeping exercise. It is the first claim on national revenue under the PFM Law. It is what keeps commercial banks’ lending, businesses turning over capital, and the economy breathing. Ignoring debt service in a critique of the budget reveals a critique more interested in scoring political points than in reckoning with fiscal reality.
The Senator oversaw average annual allocations of about US$12 million to the University of Liberia between 2012 and 2016, a period when binding constraints, overcrowded classrooms, unstable staffing, and inadequate learning conditions, remained largely unaddressed. As the nation’s apex public university, UL represents all counties—including Gbarpolu, Bomi, Bong, and beyond—and carries a national mandate to widen access and improve quality. It is therefore concerning to see opposition to the FY2026 allocation of US$40.4 million, a 19 percent increase over FY2025, aimed at stabilizing operations, keeping lecturers in classrooms, and improving sanitary learning environments, while silence remains on a 16.7 percent increase for the National Legislature. The issue is not favoritism; it is whether public funds are directed to relieve the most urgent constraints on access and quality in higher education across all counties.
The senator did not also say that this government attracted US88 million from the World Bank Group to build about 100 schools across the country including his beloved county Gbarpolu. The only reason the fund has not been released for full implementation of the project is because the fund has to be rectified by the very Legislature he works with. If the senator cared so much about schools in the rural areas, he would be the champion of this rectification.
The FY2026 Budget is not perfect. No budget is. But it is honest about our constraints, bold about our opportunities, and serious about fixing the very structural problems the Senator has described for years. As the budget is about to be debated by both Houses, I would urge the Senator to debate fully and inclusively, because the truth, when told in full, is compelling on its own. Tell the truth about how this budget is set to improve our Debt to GDP ratio from 56.6 percent to 52 percent if we financed our debt by US$230 million in FY2026 budget. Tell the truth about our fiscal discipline index, how we are adhering to our fiscal rules and targets; tell the truth about our revenue performance ratio which compares actual revenue to projected revenue; tell the truth about our budget execution rate; tell the truth about our cash management efficiency which evaluates effective management of government’s cash flows. These are the other indicators that tell a full story and not your cherry-picking indexes.