Liberia will not be seeking fresh aid from donors at a conference it is hosting but ideas on how to hasten its post-war reconstruction, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said on Wednesday.
”We are not going to ask for pledges,” Johnson-Sirleaf told delegates from major international financial organisations at the start of the two-day round table in the capital, Monrovia.
”We are going to ask the international community to come up with strategies that will accelerate the pace of programmes already being implemented,” she said.
The donors’ conference had been convened to assess how well the West African country’s first elected post-war government is performing in rebuilding the battered economy and infrastructure, and sanitising corruption-riddled state institutions.
Finance Minister Antoinette Sayeh said on Tuesday the conference would undertake a ”comprehensive stock-taking of the first six months of the new government”.
This would include ”a comprehensive update on the … economic revitalisation and institutional reform as well as the [fight against] … corruption”, he said.
”We will make an assessment of where we are,” said Johnson-Sirleaf.
The meeting of international and African donors will discuss poverty-reduction strategies, the national Budget for this year and 2007, and the prospects for clearing Liberia’s external debt arrears.
The tiny country’s external debt stood at a staggering $3,5-billion in January.
Liberia’s last donors’ conference took place in 2004 in New York, where international financiers pooled about $520-million.
The funds, channelled through NGOs, were mainly used to finance the disarmament and rehabilitation of ex-combatants, resettle refugees and rebuild schools and hospitals.
Attending the Monrovia meeting are representatives of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the African Development Bank, the United States Aid for International Development and the United Nations.
Liberia’s rich natural resources have been pillaged through corruption and civil war for more than two decades. Now the country is looking to rebuild its economy and infrastructure under the government of Johnson-Sirleaf, who came to power in January following a democratic election. — Sapa-AFP