Ebola has negative impact on Liberian economy: president

Liberian President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf said Monday that the Ebola epidemic has impacted negatively "not only our health and social systems but our economy. "

"There were sharp declines in domestic food production, mining activities, cross border trade, transport services and hospitality, " she told lawmakers.

Sirleaf said the epidemic has led to dramatic decline in "our growth rate from 5.9 percent to an initial 0.4 percent."

Although the rate was later revised to 1 percent, "the future of growth is still severely challenged."

"If we are to achieve our development goal, outlined in Agenda for Transformation - roads, ports and power, and reach the long- term average growth rate of 8 percent, radical changes will be required in the structure of our economy," she said.

Sirleaf said this requires more investment in the productive sector of the economy and in the country's governance structure and processes.

"The decline in economic activities resulted in reduction in domestic revenue collection and a sharp increase in government expenditure," she said, noting that original revenue was revised downward by 86 million U.S. dollars from 559 million dollars to 473 million dollars."

According to the president, expenditure demand increased by 153 million dollars after government introduced tight fiscal measures with expenditure threats in discretionary activities reducing the fiscal gap by 33 million dollars.

"We also introduced mitigating measures to lessen the impact of the downturn. These included foreign exchange stabilization, payment of salaries and wages of civil servants on time, ensuring commercial banks' liquidity, settling payment to road contractors and other service providers and ensuring the availability of essential commodities such as rice and petroleum," she said.

Despite numerous challenges in the face of Ebola, revenues of 517.2 million dollars was collected.

"This represents 4 percent increase in Tax Revenue and 14 percent increase in Non-Tax Revenue, she said.

She said expenditure for the period totaled 530.7 million dollars, an increase of 10.6 percent over the previous year.

Capital expenditure in the Public Sector Investment Plan includes 230 million dollars for the Mount Coffee Hydroelectric plant and 66 million dollars for three Heavy Fuel Oil plant.

Meanwhile, loans contracted from external sources totaled approximately 138.26 million dollars and 19.95 million dollars from domestic sources. External debt service was 8.56 million dollars with domestic debt service totaling approximately 41.17 million dollars.

"To date, a total of 244.2 million dollars has been spent on the Ebola response, by government and our international partners," she said. Endite