IPNEWS: Liberia’s Finance Minister, Augustine K. Ngafuan, says the government has begun reversing wage harmonization across key public institutions as part of its latest national budget, while cautiously managing public spending.
Speaking on Class Reloaded, Ngafuan disclosed that harmonization has been reversed at the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission (LACC) and the General Auditing Commission (GAC), with similar adjustments made for Supreme Court justices and judges.
He also announced that workers of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) will receive salary increases this year.
According to the Finance Minister Ngafuan, the government is proceeding carefully with fiscal reforms, noting that “in this budget, we are moving gingerly,” to balance wage adjustments with economic stability.
Ngafuan further revealed a significant shift in Liberia’s economic activity, stating that the country has moved from a 12-hour economy to an “over 18-hour economy,” signaling expanded business and productivity hours nationwide.
On development priorities, the Minister emphasized that the energy sector will absorb the bulk of Liberia’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) funding, highlighting electricity as a critical driver of economic growth and national development.
Liberia’s wage harmonization policy was introduced in 2019 by the George Weah administration primarily to address a massive fiscal deficit and meet conditions set by international financial institutions for budgetary support.
Key reasons for the policy’s imposition included but not limited to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and European Union required the government to rein in an “inflated” wage bill to secure approximately $61 million in annual budgetary support.
The government took the policy aimed to reduce the nominal wage bill from roughly $330 million to approximately $297 million to align expenditures with actual revenue. The policy sought to “harmonize” salaries so that civil servants in different ministries with the same qualifications and roles (e.g., accountants or janitors) received the same pay, correcting a system where a few ministries had significantly higher pay scales than others.
It allowed the government to transition thousands of health workers, who were previously paid through donor-funded or irregular mechanisms, onto the formal government payroll with standardized tax and social security benefits.
The reform collapsed the previous “Basic Salary” and “General Allowance” system into a single, unified pay scale to increase transparency and tax compliance.
While the government framed the policy as a “revolutionary” step toward equity, it was highly controversial because it resulted in significant salary cuts for thousands of civil servants, leading to widespread protests and economic hardship.
These articles provide context on the 2019 Liberian wage harmonization policy, discussing donor pressure, public wage bill reduction, and efforts to eliminate pay disparities.
