-While Tweah Warns Liberians Against Invasion Of Company’s Properties
By Reuben Sei Waylaun
Finance and Development Planning Minister, Samuel Tweah has urged Liberians not to subject investors in the country to politics.
Speaking Thursday April 25, 2019 at the Ministry of Information regular press briefing, the Minister said they are taking series of measures to avoid the constraints facing the Liberian economy.
According to him, they are looking up to get Arcelor Mittal back due to the drop-in the price of iron ore on the world market and they are seriously working with those companies involved into agriculture as well.
“We are working with the agriculture concessions. We gave them land and they couldn’t access the land and many of them constrained and what the government has been doing through the National Bureau of Concession (NBC), the National Investment Commission (NIC) and others in the sector is to see how we work with them in getting land to these people now and prevent people from invading their properties,” he said.
He lamented that these companies planted and they have situation where Liberians themselves go and take their materials and turned them into something else.
“This is not good, because what happens here is when an investor is in the country, other investors are calling them and asked what is the situation with your investment? Have you gotten the land that you suppose to have? And if the story is no, we have not gotten the land in the last ten years, what message do you think that sends to the new person who wants to get land,” he noted.
Minister Tweah assured that they are working to resolve all of the concession’s issues at Golden Veroleum, Sime Darby, Maryland Oil Palm Plantation, and everyone to work under the new land law.
He said the government is going to fund the project and they will now execute the new law. He said “we are working on the business climate and we have to take care of those that are here and not subject them to politics because they are talking to other investors who want to come.”
In a related development, Minister Tweah says the submission of the fiscal year (FY-2019/2020) budget to the National Legislature will delay due to significant works being done on the budget.
The most significant microeconomic indicator is the national budget because it sends the headlines how the country is disciplined, and looks at the priority areas,” he said.
According to him, when they release the budget, there are multiple ways they can look at the country just through the budget.
“We are not going to meet the budget submission deadline that we met last year because we are doing significant works on the budget. The president is sending a letter to the Speaker to extend that to May 31, 2019 so we can situate the budget in a way that it will end the best headlines of the government of Liberia from a Public Finance Management standpoint,” Minister Tweah added.
Also speaking, Minister Tweah disclosed that the Liberian Government is coming up with a serious campaign on power theft in the country.
“To be honest with you, power theft is serious and we need to do more on power. The government is going to launch a serious campaign on the power theft situation and we are going to have a Bill that will criminalize people. It’s going to be a serious crime,” he said.
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