The Government of Liberia through the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP) has announced the launch of a nationwide Fiscal Year 2024 Open Budget Initiative and Fiscal Year 2025 Pre-Budget Consultations across the country.
According to MFDP press release dated September 24, 2024, the Department of Budget and Development Planning will lead the exercises intended to enhance fiscal transparency and increase public participation in the budget process. This year’s outreach will focus on disseminating the Mid-Year Budget Performance Report, including county expenditures.
The outreach will also provide a platform for citizens, especially vulnerable and marginalized individual such as women groups, disadvantaged youths, Persons with disabilities, representatives from civil society Organizations, private sector and academia to identify their priorities for the FY2025 budget.
These initiatives aim to ensure that the voices of the public are actively incorporated into fiscal planning. The outreach and pre-budget was launched on Tuesday, September 24 in Gbarnga, Bong County, partly supported by the USAID-Local Empowerment for Accountability and Decentralization (LEAD).
These initiatives are a significant move towards improving transparency and ensure compliance with key international standards, including the Open Government Partnership (OGP), the International Budget Partnership (IBP), and the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT).
By prioritizing the availability of key budget information, the initiative seeks to foster greater accountability and informed public engagement in fiscal matters. This effort is expected to build on recent progress, which resulted in Liberia’s fiscal transparency scores increasing from 45% to 52% over the past two years. Recent assessments also indicate a rise in public participation in budget processes from 6% to 15%.
To maintain this positive trajectory, the government is committed to producing key budget documents annually and facilitating discussions that allow community members to raise inquiries about fiscal reports. The proposed actions are projected to significantly increase Liberia’s fiscal transparency score to 61% and its public participation score to 20% by the next Open Budget Survey.
