US Dollars Only: Hungry Sharks Seize The Economy 

Corrected

21 April 04

Opposition politician Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in a recent speech, decried rising corruption with state institutions. Officials accept no checks, she said. What she did not say is that they only accept the Yankee dollars, not the worthless Liberian dollar running at more than 50 to 1 against the US note.

Although the International Monetary Fund has placed efforts at centralising revenue collection, this seems to be more in theory than in practise. Agencies are still collecting funds separately, and in cash. Sources at the Ministry of Commerce, headed by a rebel official who until recently lived in the US (his family is still there, like many others) each letter signed for business transactions costs US100.  Do not ask if the money is put into state treasury. Cash only, and in US dollars. 

US dollars must be sent back home to the US or Europe to pay rents and mortgages of rebel officials.  More than frequent travels out of the country, costing about $378,000 within 6 six months for the rebel-dominated parliament alone, require US dollars, not the Liberian dollars.

The burdens of such corruption are placed on the shoulders of ordinary Liberians, particularly those returning home. At the Freeport of Monrovia, exactions are so high that some used car importers prefer to re-ship their cars to Ghana, since they cannot afford the high fees and demands of officials, many rebels and their leaders.

While such stealing was concentrated under Charles Taylor, the centres of theft have widened, with each rebel faction, political grouping accelerating the process, since time is not in their favour with less than one and half years left for elections. It is now or never. 

Charles Gyude Bryant, while in the US, said if there are no competitive Liberian businesses, he would continue to give business to Lebanese. The US3m he gave to the Lebanese and former Taylor business partner George Haddad is a case in point.  But within such corruption, as Liberians pay taxes to pay the mortgages of their politicians and rebel overlords abroad, competitive Liberian businesses are a dream. The Lebanese have mastered the act of bypassing taxes. Sources say a rebel official in charge of revenue collection was discovered to be in league with Lebanese merchants, clearing their good from the port while they pass a fraction of the costs into his private account.

Logic and compassion would mean that the government relaxes taxes on ordinary citizens who do  not have the guts to recruit child soldiers or pick-up the AK-47 to be a minister or revenue agent. The high costs of clearing goods, running at over 100% of their original costs apart from the bribes that must be paid, has skyrocketed the cost of living in an economy with more than 85% unemployment and rising.   Bryant the businessman should have been instrumental in applying the logic that costs of building materials be reduced by reducing or eliminating taxes on them for a number of years. This could help Liberians who had their homes burnt down so that the very individuals now extorting money from them could be ministers and tax collectors begin the process of rebuilding. The lack of infrastructure has sent cost of  buildings shooting through the sky, with some real estate, again Lebanese, charging US$18,000 per year for a modest building. The presence of the UN, ready to pay such amounts without strains, is an inducement. But without radical reforms, something Bryant and his rebel colleagues are grossly incapable of, the economy will continue to crack, and with it, give justification of another war of “liberation” needed to recycle the thieving sharks.

All is however not lost. The good news is that with disarmament proceeding, the rebel thieves are losing the oxygen they need to steal. Soon, Liberians will chase them out into the wilderness, where they belong.