27,000 Liberians lifted out of ‘extreme poverty’

By Lincoln G. Peters 

Finance Minister Samuel D. Tweah, Jr., says President George Manneh Weah’s administration has lifted 27,000 Liberians out of poverty.

His claim has been met with mixed reactions as critics of the Weah administration dispute his arguments with alternative data.

However, during a live radio interview Monday, 19 June 2023, Mr. Tweah said the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC)-led government inherited a population of two million people who were in extreme poverty from the previous administration. 

Mr. Tweah was hosted on state broadcaster ELBC along with Liberia’s Maritime Authority Commissioner-General, Eugene Nage, who formerly served as Information Minister both in Mr. Weah and former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s administrations.

According to Minister Tweah, the World Bank’s Poverty Profile on Liberia, particularly the Human Capital Index established that President Weah inherited two million Liberians living in extremely poor conditions. 

“The first years of His Excellency, President Weah’s administration, according to the report, twenty [thousand] Liberians came out of poverty,” Tweah argued. 

“And microeconomics hit the country. The President walked [into] the presidency believing that there was [a] solid microeconomic foundation, but it was not like that,” Minister Tweah stated.

He suggested that poverty is going down under President Weah’s administration if you carefully look at the trends before the 2017 elections and the 2023 elections.

“This report is from [the] World Bank, not me Samuel Tweah. I will refer you to [the] latest World Bank Report, investing in Human Capital, particularly Page 20 which has a graph …,” he noted.

When the CDC government took over, Minister Tweah said President Weah and his Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development pledged to lift about a million of those people out of poverty.

Minister Tweah argued that President Weah didn’t put two million Liberians into extreme poverty. 

He noted that the previous administration of ex-President Sirleaf passed the two million extremely poor people on to President Weah. 

“The previous administration of President Sirleaf didn’t take those two million people out of poverty, rather, they passed [them] to President Weah,” said Minister Tweah.

“Despite all the economic flow, billions of dollars, and investment, two million Liberians were extremely poor during the previous administration. So now, our goal is to bring them out of poverty,” he continued.

Using the World Bank Report to push his argument, Minister Tweah suggested that President Weah took over the country when poverty was increasing. 

Commenting on the microeconomic stability across the country, he said President Weah walked into a microeconomic storm and didn’t know that there was a collapse. 

The Finance Minister said when President Weah took over the country, there was a microeconomic collapse that took inflation to 30%. 

“Because of those things, people said that we were not able to run the country in our first years when [the] UN left the country, because we were struggling to pay salaries and other things.”

“But today, we have stabilized all of those things and the economy of the country is stable through the help of the economic team,” said Mr. Tweah.

He boasted that today, Liberians are having jobs and many are taken out of poverty.