President George Manneh Weah has spoken highly of the importance of the Africa Organization of Public Accounts Committees (AFROPAC) and its benefits for citizens across the African Continent.
AFROPAC, which was founded about a decade ago, is holding its 4th Meeting and Symposium in Liberia to review progress and proffer fresh ideas and benchmarks as to how Africa conducts and manages public finances.
The 4th Meeting and Symposium are being held under the theme “Collect Comprehensively, Borrow Wisely, Spend Efficiently: Public Finance in the Pandemic Recovery.”
Addressing the Symposium Monday, 31 October 2022, President Weah said like other countries, Liberia stands to accrue from the fair, transparent and accountable management of public accounts across the African Continent.
He briefly reflected on the founding of the organization, stating “I’m informed that AFROPAC was founded almost a decade ago with the vision to be the voice of all legislative and parliamentary public accounts Committees on the African Continent.”
He said it was founded for the purpose of promoting transparency and accountability through the PAN African network of parliamentary committees to structure budgets and other public accounts.
President Weah acknowledged that the objective of creating a unified structure of public accounts across the continent is to regulate all parliamentary oversights of public expenditure.
He described it as an important undertaking that gives rise to opportunities to share knowledge benchmarks and best practices to African peer review and exchange.
“This network leads to increased prosperity for all our citizens and as they stand to gain immense benefits from greater transparency and accountability in the management of public finances,” President Weah noted.
He expressed profound gratitude to Liberia’s Public Accounts Committee for ensuring the hosting of the 4th Symposium in Liberia and inviting him to participate.
For his part, Margibi County Senator and Chairman of AFROPAC, J. Emmanuel Nuquay, highlighted the need for proper mechanisms to be put in place to stop huge illicit financial flow on the continent.
He disclosed that African Countries are losing substantial resources due to illicit financial flow.
“We need to institute many systems to eliminate such,” he emphasized.
In his keynote address, Liberia’s Finance and Development Planning Minister Samuel D. Tweah, Jr. unveiled that Africa is geo-strategically disadvantaged.
Making reference to 1950, he said the United States of America gave South Korea 2.5b while in the same year, the World Bank gave 50 African Countries 2.5b respectively. He said this was Geo-Strategic Expenditure.
“Africa is Geo-Strategically Disadvantaged because it is unable to attract large investment for Geo-Strategic reasons unlike Latin America and Asia respectively,” he said.—Press release
