Published: December 15, 2025
Gbarpolu County Senator Amara Konneh
MONROVIA – Gbarpolu County Sen. Amara Konneh has accused the executive branch of carrying out illegal and reckless budget transfers and warned that the Senate must not approve Liberia’s US$1.2 billion FY2026 national budget without a far more rigorous review of how public funds are being shifted away from critical development priorities.
In a lengthy Facebook post over the weekend, the former finance minister said the House of Representatives’ rapid passage of the draft budget, without what he described as adequate scrutiny, has reopened longstanding concerns about fiscal discipline, legislative intent, and respect for the law governing budgetary transfers.
Konneh said his public intervention triggered a wave of reactions nationwide, including sharp personal attacks from former colleagues, but insisted that raising red flags over budget execution is not political grandstanding. Rather, he said, it is a constitutional obligation of lawmakers charged with safeguarding public resources.
“I firmly believe that standing up for careful examination is my constitutional duty as an elected senator,” Konneh wrote. He added that he raised similar concerns privately with colleagues in both the Legislature and the executive branch before the House acted, but was ignored—much as he said lawmakers were ignored in 2024 when the FY2024 budget was flagged, investigated and later shown to have been manipulated.
Law at the center of the dispute
He argues that the Budget Transfer Act of 2008, which amended Liberia’s Revenue Code and strictly regulates how reallocation of funds after the national budget is approved.
The law is explicit, Konneh noted: money appropriated in the annual or supplementary budget “shall be available solely for the specific purposes for which appropriated.” While transfers are permitted, they may be approved only when they are considered essential and must follow defined procedures and reporting requirements.
The Act also draws a clear distinction between major and non-major budgetary transfers. A major transfer is defined as any reallocation, whether through a single action or cumulative transfers within one fiscal year, that exceeds 20 percent of a ministry’s, agency’s, or branch’s approved budget, whether that entity is the source or recipient of the funds. Such transfers, under the law, require heightened scrutiny and legislative involvement.
Konneh said defenders of the transfers he previously criticized have misrepresented the law by focusing only on the fact that transfers are allowed, while ignoring the limits, conditions and warnings embedded in the statute.
“The law permits movement,” he wrote, “but it does not excuse the erosion of sector priorities or the dilution of legislative intent when it voted for the budget.”
‘No fiscal emergency’
Senator Konneh directly challenged the argument that the transfers were driven by necessity, pointing to what he described as strong revenue performance by the Liberia Revenue Authority. Domestic collections, he said, exceeded projections in multiple quarters, undermining claims that the government faced a liquidity crisis severe enough to justify stripping funds from development-focused programs.
“The government is not cash-strapped,” he wrote. “There was no urgent fiscal emergency that required stripping agriculture, RIA or PSIP allocations to fund other ministries’ recurrent costs.”
In his view, the transfers were choices, not necessities—and choices that run counter to the government’s own policy commitments, including the ARREST Agenda championed by the ruling Unity Party.
Sector priorities weakened
The Gbarpolu Senator laid out what he called the concrete consequences of the reallocations, warning that they go far beyond accounting adjustments and directly affect public safety, economic growth and service delivery.
At Roberts International Airport, he said roughly 62 percent of funds earmarked for upgrades were diverted, jeopardizing safety and reliability at Liberia’s main international gateway. He recalled widely shared videos from past years showing aircraft aborting landings because of power failures and infrastructure deficiencies.
“Those of us who travel through RIA know it needs upgrades,” Konneh wrote, citing nonfunctioning jetways, escalators and recurring connectivity and systems failures. “Stripping these funds puts lives at risk.”
In agriculture, he said the diversion of about US$1.2 million from value-chain programs undercuts the very sector declared the first pillar of the ARREST Agenda and the backbone of employment for most Liberians.
Urban sanitation also suffered, Konneh argued, with about half of the landfill and sanitation project’s allocation redirected elsewhere. He said this has undermined efforts to keep Monrovia and its suburbs clean, noting that many officials now defending the transfers were outspoken critics of similar sanitation failures under the previous administration.
Funds meant for revenue enhancement—designed to strengthen collection capacity and improve long-term fiscal sustainability—were also diverted, he said, weakening the government’s ability to generate and manage its own resources.
“These are not abstract reallocations,” Konneh wrote. “They are direct blows to infrastructure, public health, food security and fiscal credibility.”
Transparency concerns over “General Claims”
The senator also raised concerns about the handling of General Claims, a budget category often used to accommodate obligations that cannot be fully itemized during budget preparation.
While stressing that he does not oppose the legitimate use of General Claims, Konneh said collapsing them under a new spending entity without clear disclosure undermines transparency and weakens legislative oversight.
“When General Claims are merged into a new spending entity without clarity on management, tracking and reporting, transparency becomes nominal rather than functional,” he said.
He criticized the executive branch for introducing such changes without adequately notifying or engaging the Legislature, calling it a violation of both the spirit and the principle of fiscal accountability.
“The Legislature and the public must know who is responsible, who answers questions and how decisions are documented,” Konneh wrote.
Oversight, not political comparison
Addressing critics who argue that previous administrations engaged in similar practices, Konneh rejected comparisons that he said lower the bar for governance.
“This government came into power on a rescue mission,” he wrote. “Not to justify present failures by pointing to past excesses.”
He said the Senate’s role is not to relitigate history but to ensure that current budget execution aligns with national priorities and produces results. When budgetary practices undermine those goals, he added, legislative oversight is not optional but mandatory.
Legal guardrails and reporting duties
The Budget Transfer Act, Konneh noted, anticipated the need for adjustments when circumstances change but explicitly warned against excessive transfers that undermine accountability and fiscal objectives. It requires cumulative reallocations to be reported in quarterly fiscal outturn reports prepared by the finance minister.
For major transfers, the law prescribes a clear process: preparation by the director of the budget, written requests from spending entities, assessments by the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Expenditure and, ultimately, submission to the Legislature for consideration.
Treating the national budget as “petty cash,” Konneh warned, risks hollowing out these safeguards and eroding public trust.
Call to the Senate
Senator Konneh urged fellow senators to slow the process and demand tighter guardrails before approving the FY2026 budget. He called for real-time reporting, clearer disclosures and outcome-based accountability, saying the Senate’s Public Accounts and Audits Committee must play a central role in enforcing compliance during budget execution.
“This is about Liberia,” he wrote. “Not a political party or any individual.”
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