12/29/2025
Hon. Samuel D Tweah Jr. writes ✍️ 👇
"CDC Stopped Liberians’ Mass Slide into Poverty and Handed the UP a Solid Poverty-Reducing Foundation. Can the UP Base on This Foundation to Begin Moving Liberians out of Poverty beyond 2025?
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Today, I will break down the latest World Bank’s poverty assessment for policy makers and ordinary people. Often the Bank and the IMF write these reports, but it seems important policymakers do not understand the reports or do not aim to put them into practice. Today, I would aim to shed light on the poverty situation and on the progress that has been made and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
I have seen some political commentators make ‘honest’ attempts ( I will not disparage them because they may not be subject matter experts). According to them they say “CDC met 2.4 million Liberians in poverty and left 2.6 million people into poverty.” So “ CDC caused 200,000 Liberians to be in poverty. “ But they forgot to note that by their reasoning “between 2005 and 2016 UP caused 2.4 million Liberians to be in poverty. Of course, voters will and should choose the party that caused the smaller number of people to be poor! Even going by this illogical but nonspecialist reasoning, CDC still wins. LOL Of course, they wouldn’t know that if population is growing faster than the rate at which poverty is being reduced, especially during economic crises and pandemics, the poverty situation will look worse!
Economists would not argue like that so let’s guide our crtics’ thinking and provide the correct explanations for the public.But at least I commend their attempts to use data to explain something. One is better than zero as our people would say!
I have done some calculations to enrich the discussion. The World Bank’s poverty projections are attached below. These are projections. The last poverty study was in 2016, and my understanding is a new one may be ongoing to get final numbers, but we can use projections to guide policymakers and our people. Based on the Bank’s projections, I have made a table showing the following:
1. The number of Liberians below the poverty line per year since 2016;
2. Changes in poverty status between years
3. The Bank’s calculated poverty gap index (PGI) – this means the gap between what people are earning daily or monthly and what is needed for them to be at or above the poverty line, expressed as a percentage. It is this poverty gap that should be the focus of development programs from Government, Development Partners and the Private Sector, that neglected child in Liberia’s development.
4. Poverty Gap: using the Bank’s PGI, I have calculated the Poverty Gap per year.
5. Cost of Interventions in Liberian dollars and US Dollars: If you multiply the poverty gap by the number of people below the poverty line you get the amount needed to bring them at or above the line. It will be seen that most of th.ese costs are actually less than our annual budget.
6. Exchange Rates: Since these are for different years, different exchange rages are applied.
7. Cost per head- the amount needed per year to push each poor Liberian at the line.
Analysis of the table shows that poverty was trending up before the CDC and worsened due to COVID. Between 2017 and 2018, poverty incidence increased. While 29,000 people came out of poverty under the UP, and we should hail the UP for this, this trend reversed between 2017 and 2018. The 2016 success was partly helped by the Eloba spendings that came in between 2014 - 2016, which appeared to have trickled down to the poor. But the budget year 2017/2018 that was split between the CDC and the UP saw macroeconomic difficulties that had implications for the incidence of poverty. Many of these difficulties were anchored in macro policies in 2017 or earlier and impacted 2018 gravely.
So, 2018 and 2019 were tough macroeconomic years, worsening poverty, and moving more than 334,000 people below the poverty line. COVID-19 exacerbated this picture, pushing an additional 174,000 people below the line in 2020. Global poverty rate due to COVID increased by 1.3 percent; however, in Liberia, this increase was a mere 0.3 percent. This means, COVID-19 pushed less people into poverty in Liberia than was the case around Sub-Saharan Africa and the world at large.
A combination of aggressive macro stabilization under the CDC and strong development outreach under the PAPD reversed this negative poverty trend. As a result, in 2021, 47,000 Liberians ( down from 174,000 the year before) plunged below the poverty line. In 2022, about 1,900 people came out of poverty! In 2023, 39,500 people went below the poverty line, with 9,350 and 6,750 respectively are the numbers projected to fall into poverty for 2024 and 2025.
What is the conclusion from this trend? Both the CDC and the UP have stamped the slide of large numbers of people going below the poverty line. But substantia number of people still remain poor.
CDC received a difficult foundation for poverty, which worsened due to COVID-19. But the CDC stamped the poverty slide and handed the UP a stronger foundation. In 2017, economic growth under the UP was 2.5 percent. In 2023, economic growth under the CDC was 4.7 percent. The World Bank has argued globally that growth alone will not solve Africa’s poverty problem but is foundational to moving people out of poverty or stamping cascading descents into poverty. The growth trend and downward poverty trend under the CDC confirm this story. Can the UP normalize escapes from poverty?
Going forward, Governments have to dig harder into removing people from poverty as happened between 2016 and 2017, hurray to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and between 2021 and 2022, bravo to President George Manneh Weah . This is where the focus ought now to be and this is where the onus will be placed on the Unity Party. The UP cannot argue that “the CDC did not move 50,000 people from poverty in a given year so Rescue-UP should not be expected to move 50,000 from poverty in any year.” With such an argument, the UP would or might be saying it is going to lose the next election, an outcome that would of course be favorable to the CDC.
But we all have to transcend this UP-CDC cycle and ask what policymakers and citizens have to do to change this story? Policymakers will have to make better use of our national budget and citizens will have to hold their leaders’ feet to more blazing fires. If drastic changes to national budget programming are not done business as usual will be the norm.
My calculation shows that on average since 2016 at different exchange rates, the average annual amount Liberia has needed to close the poverty gap is around US$484 million. This amount has usually been less than our national budget in the last several years and now that our budget has gone to US$1.2 billion, we should be able to move at least 50,000 people per year from poverty with such a budget. This is the result that we would be looking for and citizens should press the Unity Party for this result.
For this to happen the UP cannot implement the budget in its current form and would have to make deep inroads into Liberia’s private sector and agricultural difficulties, which hold the greatest promise to lifting Liberians out of poverty. The cost per head to close the poverty gap in Liberia in 2025 is aboutUS$133 per poor person. This is doable!
I will say more on these on the Spoon show but this ought to be the crux and substance of public debate."
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