By William Selmah,selmahwm1015@yahoo.com
The U.S. State Department has released its 2019 Fiscal Transparency Report, placing Liberia in the category of countries that made no significant progress in exhibiting financial clearness in their dealings.
The report said the Liberian government failed to adequately capture foreign assistance receipts; mainly project based, in the budget.
Since coming to power nearing two years now, Liberian President George Manneh Weah and his Coalition for Democratic Change government has come under strong criticisms at home for lack of transparency and accountability.
Besides, the US State Department Report said the foreign assistance receipts were not also subject to the same audit and domestic oversight as other budget items.
The review period covered January 1 – December 31, 2018.
Budget documents, according to the report, made it difficult to identify natural resource revenues.
Some of the pitfalls of Liberia, according to the document, relates to the failure of the GAC to publish its reports within a reasonable time period.
“Fiscal transparency as a critical element of effective public financial management, helps build market confidence, and underpins economic sustainability”, it said.
The report recommended that Liberia’s fiscal transparency could be improved through “ensuring the budget is substantially complete, subjecting off-budget accounts to adequate audit and oversight, making supreme audit institution audit reports publicly and timely available and ensuring the criteria and procedures used to award natural resource extraction contracts and licenses are consistent with the requirements set by law or regulation”
It also speaks of the need to publish basic information on the awarding of natural resources extraction.
The report also evaluates how transparent contract awarding processes and the issuance of licenses for natural resource extraction are in government.
Out of a total of 140 governments evaluated globally, 67 fell below the minimum financial transparency requirements belt, according to the U.S. State Department report.
From the entire West African belt, only Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Senegal and, Sierra Leone made it to the category of governments that met the minimum fiscal transparency criteria.
Since coming into power pushing to two years now, Liberian President George Manneh Weah and his Coalition for Democratic Change gover