15/09/2026
Mustapha Dukuly Defends Liberia’s US$1 Billion Budget, Challenges Jacob Jallah’s Criticism of Ngafuan and LRA Revenue Performance
He writes ✍🏾
"My official title is —Mustapha Dukuly, Principal Advisor for Program & Policy, Office of the Minister.
Let me start with Jacob's central claim that the growth of the budget is "not due to any fundamental, structural expansion of the economy." That claim baffles me, and it makes me wonder whether Jacob has an aversion to reading or whether he bothers to review World Bank, IMF, and AfDB reporting on Liberia at all. ECOWAS and other development partners have explicitly touted Liberia's performance; in fact, a recent ECOWAS report highlights Liberia, alongside Ghana and Nigeria, as one of the three countries driving regional economic stability and growth for 2026. And the fact is, the economy grew by 4.0 percent in 2024, 5.1 percent in 2025, and is projected to grow by 5.5 percent in 2026.
In simple terms, Jacob, this means there is significantly more economic activity taking place in Liberia than before. More production, more trade, more services, more transactions, and more formal economic activity widen the tax base. When economic activity expands, the tax base expands with it, and more revenue naturally flows into the budget.
This does not mean that every Liberian has become rich, that street vending has vanished, that infant mortality has been eradicated overnight, or that every young person has secured a job. But it does mean your claim that this revenue performance came entirely from thin air is utterly unsupported by the facts. It is just loose talk as usual.
Now to the torborgee. Jacob, you tell us that you are from Lofa, and that torborgee always returns to its natural limits once the artificial soda wears off. Fine. Then explain this.
From February 2006 to August 2008, Minister Ngafuan served as Director General of the Bureau of the Budget. From August 2008 to February 2012, he served as Minister of Finance. Through those six years, the national budget sat under his watch, and it moved from roughly $80 million to around $516 million. By your own logic, that was soda in the pot, an artificial rise bound to collapse back to its natural speed limit.
So why didn't it? Why didn't the budget fall back to $80 million after he left the fiscal office? Why did it instead hold that level as a floor and crawl up to $700 million over the next twelve years?
The truth is that the growth in the national budget has come from fiscal expansion built on institutional reform and broader compliance. Reform of that kind sets a new structural floor. Country soda wears off. Collection systems do not.
I take no pleasure in having to explain this. It is excruciatingly painful to engage a man on a subject where he shows no rudimentary grasp of the fundamentals. But the public deserves an alternative to what he is putting out, so here we are.
This revenue growth is real revenue growth. It is not a chemical trick. It is the product of rigorous domestic resource mobilization, aggressive LRA enforcement, the plugging of systemic leakages, and a deliberate widening of the tax net.
I say this as someone who was in the room. I sat in many meetings, took the notes, and worked on the final policy actions alongside Commissioner Jallah of the LRA and Minister Ngafuan. Some of those discussions took place in the Minister’s office. Others were held at Bella Cassa and, on some occasions, at the Liberia Revenue Authority during open, televised sessions. I watched the brainstorming. I watched the difficult conversations. I watched the numbers being examined, the problems being challenged, and the policy actions being refined. Most importantly, I watched the grinding work that eventually produced the collection performance we are celebrating today.
The Ministry of Finance and Development Planning set the revenue target, worked with the Liberia Revenue Authority to establish the performance framework, and tracked progress along the way. The Ministry also helped create the incentive structure that encouraged delivery against those targets. Both institutions earned this result, and both deserve the credit.
To dismiss this as jobless growth or smell no taste is to ignore how the expanded fiscal space reaches ordinary citizens. This Administration is not sitting on $1.3 billion in a vault; it is actively spending it. A $150 gross minimum wage is being enforced across Government. In this year’s budget, $16 million has been allocated to service the $83 million debt that the past administration accumulated by raiding the Central Bank to pay civil servants. This $16 million could have gone to Ma Watta and Ma Klubo, but it is addressing legacy liabilities. This Administration has neither resorted to that practice nor intends to do so. At the same time, it continues to pay civil servants on schedule while advancing road construction and other development work across the country.
ELWA Hospital is being subsidized so it can keep private doctors on its payroll. The operations of the $285 million yellow machines are being financed for all fifteen counties. NTA bus fares are subsidized, so Ma Klubo and Ma Watta can travel from Monrovia to Zwedru cheaply and arrive the same day, which was not their experience under the last administration. More than 3,000 long-suffering volunteer teachers and healthcare workers, who spent years educating our children and treating the sick without pay, are now on the official payroll. Judges' hacked salaries have been restored to pre-harmonization levels. Local vendors are being paid on time. Staple food prices have stayed stable across all fifteen counties.
Putting liquidity directly into the hands of teachers, engineers, local vendors, and civil servants is economic participation from the bottom up. That is not smell without taste. That is money in people's pockets.
The same budget is putting roads under Ma Watta's feet. Roughly 164 kilometers have been paved, about 150 kilometers of primary roads and 14.2 kilometers of community roads. On the primary network: Gbarnga to Salayea, 14.2 km; Sanniquellie to Loguatuo, 20 km; Ganta to Saclepea, 16.5 km; Saclepea to Tappita, 61 km; Madina to Robertsport, 3.9 km; Fish Town to Kelipo, 20 km. On community roads: Soul Clinic Road, 2 km; Kakata city streets, 3.5 km; Brewerville VOA Road, 1.6 km; Freeport to St. Paul Bridge Road, 3.3 km; Caldwell to Dixville, 1.2 km; Rock Crusher, 1.38 km; Thinker Village to Duport Road, 1.24 km.
In the security and rule of law sector, the AFL has recruited about 600 personnel. Renovation of the barracks is underway. The Police Training Academy is being renovated. Prison renovations are ongoing, including Monrovia Central Prison, and work has begun at Cheesemanburg.
Every one of those items has a cost, and every one of those costs is carried by the fiscal space Jacob says is built on air.
Ultimately, the source of Jacob’s frustration is clear enough. For months, critics of his stripe called the billion-dollar target ‘’unfathomable’’ and prophesied unmitigated doom. For those who see through the smoke, Jacob and his ilk are a textbook red herring. For months, critics of his stripe called the billion-dollar target unfathomable and prophesied unmitigated doom. Now that the milestone has been crossed under Minister Ngafuan's stewardship, backed by a team of rigorously trained economists and administrators at MFDP and the LRA, they find themselves holding the embarrassment of their own failed predictions. They are acutely aware that the public is watching, that their earlier forecasts have lost all force, and that no one will take their economic prognostications seriously again.
Stripped of credibility, they have retreated to the cheap tactic of dismissing the very leaders who actually delivered the results. We understand the state they are in. However, history remembers those who built the machinery and those who sat on the sidelines throwing stones. The numbers are in, and the wheels of state are turning faster and more credibly than before
On another note, for Jacob Jallah to refer to Minister Ngafuan and Commissioner Dorbor Jallah as "clueless," or to attempt to diminish their achievement in steering the national budget to the historical US$1 billion mark, is the height of absurdity.
Furthermore, Jacob, you walked the halls of the University of Liberia, the very institution that shaped both Minister Ngafuan and Commissioner Dorbor Jallah. Minister Ngafuan placed among the top three students in the nation during the 1989 WAEC examinations, earning the prestigious WAEC Merit Award. He went on to graduate summa cm laude from the University of Liberia, while Commissioner Dorbor graduated magna cm laude, with both men topping their respective classes.
Both advanced to elite institutions for their postgraduate studies: Minister Ngafuan earned his MBA from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, and Commissioner Dorbor earned a Master of Engineering in Logistics and Supply Chain Management alongside a SPURS certificate in Technology and Policy Management from MIT. Minister Ngafuan further sharpened his expertise with executive training in Public Financial Management and Leading Economic Growth at the Harvard Kennedy School, alongside an executive leadership certificate from the Wharton School. Internationally, Minister Ngafuan managed a staggering US$2.2 billion World Bank portfolio in Uganda, expanding it by US$600 million while driving substantial development impact.
Yet you casually throw insults at men whose academic and professional trajectories tower miles above yours.
These are the two men now steering the fiscal arm of the Liberian Government. What milestones in your own educational or professional journey can possibly compare to theirs? It is individuals of your temperament who stunt their own professional growth. Instead of seeking mentorship and learning from those who have actually excelled, you have hit the absolute ceiling of arrogance and are displaying pure cluelessness. The leaders managing our economy are operating at the highest tier."
