Published: April 8, 2026
MONROVIA — When a president invokes a rarely used constitutional provision to drag lawmakers back to the Capitol two weeks ahead of the regular legislative calendar, and the top item on the agenda is printing more money, it is worth pausing to ask a question that nobody in the Boakai administration appears eager to answer: Is Liberia running out of cash?
The formal language surrounding President Joseph N. Boakai Sr.’s decision to convene a special legislative session from April 9 to April 23 is measured and bureaucratic. He cited Article 32(b) of the 1986 Constitution. He wrote to House Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon about matters of “urgent national concern.” He said the proposals are “time-sensitive and cannot await the resumption of the regular session in May.”
But strip away the constitutional formalities and what remains is a government moving with unusual haste to authorize a new round of banknote printing in a country where the printing of new currency has, within living memory, been synonymous with scandal, instability, and the quiet erosion of ordinary people’s purchasing power.
The question is not whether Liberia needs new banknotes. It almost certainly does. The question is why, how many, and whether the institutions responsible for managing the process have learned anything from a history that offers little comfort.
A Currency System Still Finding Its Footing
To understand what is happening now, it is necessary to understand what happened just recently.
Between 2021 and 2024, the Central Bank of Liberia undertook one of the most significant monetary overhauls in the country’s post-war history. The Legislature authorized the printing of L$48.734 billion in a new family of banknotes — the LS3 series — comprising denominations of L$20, L$50, L$100, L$500 and L$1,000, along with L$5 and L$10 coins. The reform was explicitly designed to address liquidity shortages and restore public confidence in a currency that had been badly damaged by fraud in earlier printings.
The rollout was phased across three years. Crane Currency of Sweden printed the initial batch of L$100 notes, 4 billion notes delivered in November 2021 and another 4 billion in February 2022, specifically to ease an acute cash shortage heading into the 2021 holiday season. Subsequent shipments of L$20, L$50, L$500 and L$1,000 notes arrived through late 2022, followed by a final batch of L$12.531 billion delivered in 2024.
The old LS1 and LS2 series notes were demonetized on May 31, 2024. From that point forward, the new LS3 family became the sole legal tender circulating in Liberia.
That transition was completed less than one year ago. The ink on the new notes, figuratively speaking, is barely dry.
And yet here is the Boakai administration, less than 12 months later, seeking legislative authorization for another round of printing.
What the Numbers Are Telling Us
The most straightforward explanation for a currency shortage in any economy is that demand for physical cash has outpaced supply. In a largely cash-based economy like Liberia’s, where banking penetration remains low, mobile money is still not universally accessible outside urban centers, and most daily transactions are conducted in physical notes, the appetite for banknotes is enormous and structurally persistent.
Finance Minister Augustine Ngafuan has been publicly bullish about the state of the economy. He announced that domestic revenue reached approximately $840 million in 2025, surpassing the previous record of roughly $700 million set in 2024. The national budget crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time in the country’s history, and the government has projected a $1.2 billion budget for 2026.
Those are genuine achievements. But they also create their own pressure. As the formal economy grows, as government payroll expands, as revenue collection increases and public spending rises, the volume of physical currency required to keep transactions moving grows with it. A larger economy operating on a cash basis needs more cash.
At the same time, banknotes have a finite lifespan. High-denomination notes in heavy circulation deteriorate. The L$100 notes that began circulating in late 2021 are now more than four years old, approaching the end of their usable life in a tropical climate where humidity, handling, and informal storage accelerate wear. Replacement printing is not just foreseeable; it is inevitable.
None of this is scandalous on its face. Central banks routinely authorize replacement printing cycles.
The Supplementary Budget Problem
Alongside the banknote proposal sits the 2026 supplementary budget. Supplementary budgets are instruments governments reach for when original spending projections fall short of reality. They are necessary tools of fiscal management, but they are also, in less flattering terms, admissions that the numbers did not work out as planned.
Liberia projected a record $1.2 billion budget for 2026. That projection was made before the Iran conflict sent global petroleum prices climbing, before the full weight of the USAID withdrawal, which stripped more than $300 million from Liberia’s aid flows, was felt across government ministries, and before the broader disruptions to the global trading environment began reverberating through small, import-dependent economies like Liberia’s.
Ngafuan himself acknowledged publicly that neighboring countries have faced acute petroleum product shortages. He has been careful to emphasize that Liberia has maintained supply, but he has also conceded that the economic management team has been in continuous session trying to stay ahead of the crisis, and that interventions, including government subsidies for the National Transit Authority and support for hospitals facing fuel-driven cost increases, are imminent.
Subsidies cost money. Interventions require financing. If the revenue side of the ledger is holding but the expenditure side has been blown open by cascading global shocks, a supplementary budget is not a sign of fiscal recklessness, rather a sign that reality has arrived ahead of schedule.
The critical question, which the Legislature will need to press when it reconvenes, is whether the supplementary budget represents a responsible recalibration or an attempt to paper over a structural shortfall with new spending authority.
The Ghost of Scandals Past
No discussion of Liberian banknote printing can proceed honestly without acknowledging the context of scandal that surrounds the subject.
In 2018, under the administration of then-President George Weah, approximately L$16 billion in newly printed banknotes went missing during the handover period following the 2017 election. The controversy, which came to be known colloquially as the “missing mop-up money” scandal, triggered an international audit, a Justice Department investigation, and a crisis of confidence in Liberian monetary institutions that took years to partially repair. It also produced the kind of public cynicism about currency printing that does not dissipate quickly.
The subsequent 2021-2024 reform effort was in part a direct response to that scandal. The explicit mandate from the Legislature, the phased delivery schedule, the use of an internationally recognized security printer in Crane Currency, and the verification by USAID auditors on arrival were all designed to demonstrate that the process could be conducted with transparency and accountability.
What a Responsible Legislature Should Do
When lawmakers convene April 9, they will face a set of decisions with consequences that extend well beyond the two-week session. They should demand full transparency on the scale of new banknote printing being proposed, not just the authorized ceiling but the specific denominations, the rationale for the volume, and the projected absorption capacity of an economy that received its last major currency injection less than a year ago.
They should require a detailed accounting of how the supplementary budget will be financed, whether through domestic revenue, external borrowing, or monetary expansion, and whether the Central Bank of Liberia has independently validated the macroeconomic assumptions underlying the request.
They should insist on knowing what procurement process will govern the new printing contract, which firm will be awarded it, and what independent oversight mechanisms will verify delivery and distribution. The 2021-2024 experience established a model. The question is whether that model will be followed or quietly abandoned in the name of urgency.
And they should resist the temptation to let the Kolubah controversy consume time and political energy that belongs to the economic agenda. Border disputes are serious. So is the risk of printing currency without adequate legislative scrutiny in a country where that process has gone wrong before.
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