IPNEWS: With less than a month, following the signing into law by President Boakai, the New Port Reform Bills, Exprts have warned that the new port laws would let ports be created, licensed and opened to foreign cargo without ever coming under customs authority, opening what the Liberia Revenue Authority calls a legal pathway for goods to arrive at officially established ports where customs has no power to clear them.
In a transcript by LRA to the Ministry of Justice obtained by the authoritative Independent Probe, the LRA legal analysis warns that the gap created by the new port law runs through three legislations.
The LRA legal analysis warns that the Autonomous ports would be created by legislative act and given territorial limits with no requirement that they be designated customs ports of entry. The new National Ports Regulatory Commission could issue an operating license without checking whether a port holds that designation or has customs infrastructure. And private ports would be authorized under a provision that carries no customs entry requirement at all.
On the strength of that analysis, LRA Commissioner General James Dorbor Jallah has asked President Joseph Nyuma Boakai to recall the law.
In a communication to Justice Minister and Attorney General Cllr. Oswald N. Tweh, dated July 17, and obtained by the authoritative Independent Probe Newspaper, LRA Commission General warned that the Liberia Sea and Inland Ports Autonomy and Modernization Act of 2025 and the act establishing the National Ports Regulatory Commission has now created “fourteen (14) areas of conflict, overlap, or ambiguity with established customs functions under the Revenue Code.”
Commissioner Jallah sounded similar warning during a public hearing to the Joint committee on Maritime, even though it was no yielded to.
The analysis shows now fourteen provisions of the new law are in conflict with the Liberia current revenue code, including Part V of the Revenue Code, the Modernized Customs Code, chapters 12 through 17 as amended in 2020.
LRA analysis focuses on Section 1213 of the Revenue Code, which gives the LRA exclusive authority to designate ports of entry and provides that no port may lawfully receive imported goods unless designated. Because the Port Autonomy law now creates ports without requiring that step, the memorandum says, a port could be legally constituted, licensed and operating while sitting outside the customs framework entirely. It calls that a fundamental structural gap and, in the licensing and private ports provisions, a revenue leakage and anti-smuggling risk.
LRA Commissioner four priorities areas which would enlarge the authority’s standing relative to the bodies the bills create: a savings and supremacy clause making the Revenue Code prevail on customs, tariff and duty matters; mandatory LRA representation on the port boards and on the commission, which the memorandum describes as three presidential appointees; customs conditions attached to commission licensing; and a carve-out reserving customs offenses to the LRA alone. Those four, Commissioner Jallah emphasized , “would resolve the greatest number of identified conflicts with the least legislative intervention.” The letter says the authority “is not in opposition to port decentralization as a significant step to achieving a modernized port governance framework,” and the memorandum calls the two bills a commendable step toward modernizing port governance.
The analysis also concedes that the remaining conflicts fall into two groups. On enforcement, the memorandum says the same conduct inside a port could be pursued at once by the LRA under the Revenue Code and by the port authority under its own offenses section, with no primacy rule or referral duty in either bill.
It cites unlawful unlading under Section 1716, carrying penalties to a minimum of US$1 million for prohibited goods; manifest discrepancies under Section 1715, penalized at 100 percent of the value of the goods for a first offense, 200 percent for a second and 300 percent thereafter; and ship stores violations under Section 1717, at US$5,000. It warns of overlapping proceedings, inconsistent outcomes and potential double jeopardy.
On costs, it says goods held in a customs-controlled area could attract storage charges under Section 1333 of the Revenue Code and again under the port’s commercial powers, with no rule on which prevails and the burden falling on importers, and that carriers holding an LRA bonded licence could be required to obtain a second authorization from the port.
Prior to the signing into law of new port regulatory framework and decentralization laws, Experts warned that the law would introduce several institutional, financial, and operational risks— warning both the Ministry of Justice, and the Liberia Revenue Authority that the changes could trigger overlapping authority, revenue leakages, and regulatory friction.
The new law also creates jurisdictional conflicts with the existing Liberia Maritime Authority regarding maritime safety and international compliance, and Cripples centralized oversight by dividing enforcement and licensing powers between national bodies and autonomous local port entities.
Another issue raised is the potential for clashes with the Liberia Revenue Authority over issuing bonded carrier licenses, forcing businesses to navigate conflicting rules.
On the scale of the financial and economic risks, Experts warned that the provision that requires ports to remit a percentage of their quarterly revenues to sustain the new regulatory body, which could push weaker regional ports into operational deficits.
Other risk outlined due to the new law includes risks forcing stat. e bailouts or shifting financial burdens back to the national budget if decentralized ports fail to remain self-funding, and a potential to Increase operating costs for port users and shipping lines, potentially discouraging foreign investment and international trade volume
