IPNews-Monrovia, Liberia-28 February 2018: The recast of the 2017/2018 budget to enable the government just in power for one month now, tackle its development agenda is gradually set to suffer serious setback with delays in its submission by the Executive Breach of government as deadline date have been since past on February 15, 2018. The 2017/2018 fiscal period would finally ends on June 30, 2018
The House’s Chairman on Ways, Means, Finance and Development Planning, Thomas P. Fallah, told reporters that the ‘Recast Budget” is yet to be received by the House of Representatives and raised concerns that continued delays would undermine the finalization of the government anticipated fiscal Budget of 2018/2019, whose is expected to be submitted on April 30th, as required by the budgetary period and in accordance to the Public Financial Management Law.
Speaking recently during the three-day Orientation retreat for members of the House of Representatives in Margibi County, Rep. Fallah urged the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning to act accordingly.
“The recast budget should have been submitted since the 15th of February, but now it has been delayed for eight days (Thursday). If the recast budget continues to be rescheduled, I am afraid that the submission of the 2018/2019 Budget would be a problem.” Rep. Fallah expressed.
Although reasons for the delay were not disseminated to the Press but there is speculation that imminent budget shortfall is expected to be announced.
It can be recalled recently that the head of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) had expressed fears of a budgetary shortfall in view of the National Legislature’s decision to put a halt to the National Road fund tax scheme which had been projected to raise a total of US$11 million to support the national budget.
The Government of Liberia had proposed a US$0.25 tax imposition on petroleum imports to be allocated to a road tax fund intended to support the maintenance of the country’s road network. However, the Legislature was of the view that the proposed tax was leading to increased hardships on ordinary Liberians and therefore recommended its immediate suspension.
Since the suspension of the tax scheme, the GOL has faced difficulty in meeting its revenue projections.
Also, according to the head of the LRA, Elfrieda Stewart Tamba, the forestry sector posed another risk to the budget because of existing and pending MOUs between GOL and actors in this sector waiving taxes deemed payable to Government.
Commissioner Tamba had also disclosed that a US$6.1 million waiver on rice imports, considered an essential commodity, has also had a dampening effect on revenue collection. She added that while GOL had a heavy reliance on revenue derived from taxes on imports, she observed that only 35 percent of total imports were commercial as compared to non-commercial, which accounted for 65 percent of total imports.
