The Liberian Senate is said to be conducting scrutiny of various lines of the National Budget for Fiscal Year 2025 that could see an upsurge in revenue generation up to US$900,000,000.
On Saturday, December 14, 2024, the Senate ended hearings on the 2025 National Budget revenue component to assess the possibility of the Liberia Revenue Authority’s (LRA) generating the total projection of the budget.
Senate Committee Chair on Ways, Means, Finance and Budget, Prince Moye, said given the august body’s vetting of both local revenue and international contributions, it will make a determination in the coming days whether to hold onto the entire 851,000,000 budget projection.
Speaking on the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA) not contributing anything to the national budget, Moye said that the Authority has existed by for more than five years and is required by law to remit to the country’s revenue generation.
“We have mandated the Commissioner General of LRA to proceed with the situation with NaFAA and get back to us Monday (today, December 16,2024), because we don’t want to do another assessment of NaFAA in the 2025 Budget that will not yield any result as we desire as a country,” he said.
Senator Moye said some of the lines indicated to revenue sources within the budget are very conserved, but considering what was achieved in 2024 budget, it could be possible for government to raise the projected US$800 million plus.
Meanwhile, the lawmaker said the body has critiqued vendor share within the budget which is up to US$12,000,000, and will investigate to known whether these vendor shareholders are performing the duties for which they are paid this huge amount of taxpayers’ money.
“We are digging into all of that and when we conclude, there will be prospects that additional revenue can be identified that would raise the entire revenue envelope to US$ 900 million,” he said.
