Growth on Paper, Hunger in the Pot

THE WORLD BANK has handed the Boakai administration a report card that should end the season of self-congratulation. Its seventh Liberia Economic Update, launched in Monrovia this week under the title “Beyond Growth: Addressing Structural Constraints to Job-Rich Growth in Liberia,” says the economy grew 5.1 percent in 2025, up from four percent the year before. In the same breath, the Bank estimates that extreme poverty rose from 34.6 percent in 2024 to 36.1 percent in 2025. Put plainly, the cake got bigger while more Liberians were left without a slice.

WE DO NOT dismiss what the government has achieved. The fiscal deficit narrowed to 2.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), public debt eased from 56.4 percent to 55.1 percent of GDP, and inflation was held in check. These are not small things in a country where, not long ago, prices ran ahead of wages every month. The World Bank Country Manager for Liberia, Georgia Wallen, acknowledged the progress but named the real test: “The key challenge now is translating growth into opportunities and improvements in people’s lives.”

THAT TEST IS where the numbers turn against the government. Mining grew 17 percent, yet mining employs few people. Agriculture, where most Liberians earn their living, grew by only 2.6 percent, and manufacturing contracted. About 78 percent of workers are stuck in informal, insecure work, and nearly nine in every 10 businesses are one-person operations. Growth that rides on iron ore, gold and rubber passes over the heads of the farmer in Lofa, the market woman at Red Light and the young man pushing a wheelbarrow in Duala.

THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN choices have deepened the hole. The Bank reports that capital spending fell from 8.5 percent to 5.7 percent of GDP, which analyses of the report put at a drop from about US$406 million (L$69.18 billion) to US$297 million (L$50.61 billion). In other words, the books were balanced partly by cutting the roads, power lines and farm-to-market links that create tomorrow’s jobs. Over the same year, those analyses show interest payments rising from US$49 million (L$8.35 billion) to US$87 million (L$14.82 billion). Money that should build is going to creditors.

THEN THERE IS the quiet rot in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The World Bank found that, over six years, financial information was submitted for only 83 of 276 possible entity-years, and that 25 of the 46 entities operating through 2025 had never filed a financial return. The Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) was owed about US$34 million (L$5.79 billion), most of it by government institutions themselves. A government that does not pay its own light bill cannot lecture citizens on discipline, nor can it say with confidence what its corporations are costing the taxpayer.

FAIRNESS REQUIRES US to note one caveat. The poverty figures are model-based estimates, because Liberia’s last official household survey dates to 2016. That is no reason to wave the findings away. It is a reason to fund a new national household survey without delay, so that policy rests on facts rather than on hopes and press releases.

THE ADMINISTRATION’S ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development promised Liberians a rescue. At midterm, the people in the markets are asking where the rescue is. The answer cannot be another round of growth figures read out at a press conference. It must show up in a cheaper bag of rice, a farmer holding a land deed he can take to the bank, a road that stays open in the rainy season, and a young graduate with a payslip.

THE WORLD BANK has set out four priorities: protect macroeconomic stability, remove the constraints on private investment and diversification, strengthen oversight of SOEs, and steer investment toward livelihoods. We add a fifth, which is political will. Restore capital spending to the things that create jobs. Put money and extension services into agriculture so that Liberia stops spending close to half a billion dollars a year on imported food. Make the new State-Owned Enterprises Authority bite, beginning with audits that are published. And let every ministry pay its light bill.

GROWTH IS A means, and the people are the end. Ma Liberia will judge this government by whether her pot is fuller at night, whatever the growth rate says. On that measure, the World Bank says, 2025 was a year of sliding backward. This year must not repeat it.