Claim: “The MVTC had $111,476 in the 2022 fiscal budget; in 2023, they had $140,579. This year, under the rescue government, their fiscal budget is $4000. And this government is committed to youth education and empowerment.”
Source: Aloysius Howe, special assistant to Samuel Tweah, ex-Finance Minister of Liberia.
Verdict: True, the government reduced the MVTC budget from US$ 140,879 to US$ 4,000 but the figures stated by Howe were either overstated or understated.
Full Text: On October 8, 2024, former Special Assistant to Ex-Finance Minister of Liberia, Aloysius Howe, posted on his official Facebook account claiming that the Government of Liberia headed by President Joseph N. Boakai drastically reduced the budget of Monrovia Vocational Training Center “MVTC” this 2024 fiscal year.
He claimed that during the 2022 fiscal year under ex-President Weah’s tenure, MVTC received an allocation of US$ 111,476 and also experienced an increase of US$ 140,579 during the 2023 budget year, but alleged that the institution’s 2024 budget has been reduced to US$4,000 by the Boakai’s administration.
“The MVTC had $111,476 in the 2022 fiscal budget; in 2023, they had $140,579. This year, under the rescue government, their fiscal budget is $4000. And this government is committed to youth education and empowerment. This is ridiculous,” Howe wrote.
The post generated 106 likes, 160 comments, and 6 shares, thus sparking public reactions in the comment section.
Verification: To authenticate Howe’s claim, our team researched the approved 2022, 2023, and 2024 National Budget. Contrary to his claim of $ 111,476 being placed in the 2022 fiscal budget, we find $149,756 in the outturn for MVTC, which could mean that is the total fund that was expended of what was budgeted to the institution for the fiscal year.
Also, instead of US$ 140,579, as claimed by Howe, being included in the 2023 National Budget for MVTC, we discovered that an amount of $140,879 was approved during the passage of the 2023 National Budget, but the result was $109,649.
However, Howe’s claim of the President Boakai Administration reducing the Monrovia Vocational Training Center budget to $4,000 compared to the previous year is accurate.
In the 2024 recast budget, an amount of $4,000 was allocated to MVTC.
Conclusion: Based on our research into Liberia’s national budgets for 2022, 2023, and 2024, we discovered that Howe’s information about the allocation made to MVTC in the 2022 and 2023 budgets was either overstated or understated. But he is correct that the MVTC budget is $4000.
Written by: Patrick Mayor, Margibi Grant Fellow
