About

About Liberia
Legislative Budget
Office

About Liberia Legislative Budget Office

Brief History of the LBO

The 52nd Legislature, in 2006, saw the need to address the institutional weaknesses of National Legislature and thereby it into a modern assembly of men and women positively contributing to the reconstruction and development of the country. This effort was aimed at consolidating the peace, the advancement of democracy, rule of law and good governance in the country.

With assistance from International Development Partners (IDPs), the Legislature formulated a Modernization Plan that would make the Liberian Legislature 21″ Century compliant. Pillar 3 Priority Code 1 of the Modernization Plan calls for operationalizing and capacitating the Legislative Budget Office (LBO).

What is the Legislative Budget Office?

The LBO was created by an Act of the Legislature on September 17, 2010 and began operations in May 2011. The bicameral unit is a non-partisan professional technical arm of the Legislature. Its primary function is to provide objective, impartial and professional analyses of the National Budget.

LBO Core Services

As a non-partisan professional body, the LBO:

Conducts an impartial and objective analysis of public expenditure and the National Budget proposals of the President;
Conducts fiscal impact analysis of legislations;
Prepares the Legislative Budget Response, indicating areas of concern with the President’s National Budget proposals that may include alternative spending and revenue proposals;
Assists the National Legislature to formulate a Budget Plan;
Assists the National Legislature to assess the impact of Line Ministries & Agencies (LMA) compliance with the government mandate;
Provides pertinent information that assists the National Legislature in considering issues related to the National Budget and economic policy;
Ensures that the Legislature understands and is kept fully appraised of the state of affairs pertaining to Liberia’s financial management in order to execute its oversight, appropriation and lawmaking responsibilities; and
Conducts financial and socio-economic research and interpretation as delineated in the LBO Work Plan.

Office

The bicameral legislative support office consists of three functional units namely: Revenue, Expenditure and Macro-Economic Analysis. It also has an Information Technology staff.

Revenue Unit: The Revenue Unit conducts research and provides analysis on tax policy, tax measures, revenue estimates, and forecasts.

Expenditure Unit: The Expenditure Unit conducts analysis of government appropriations as against spending and evaluates budget performance by LMA’s.

Macro-Economic Analysis Unit: The Macro-Economic Analysis Unit conducts macro-economic surveys and fiscal impact analyses of legislations.

Information Technology: The IT staff design and format budget analyses and other LBO reports.

Additional Services Provided by the LBO Include:

Collecting, interpreting, consolidating, and processing financial and social-economic information and data from all institutions and experts for the use of legislative committees as well as groups and individual lawmakers;
Collecting, analyzing, and consolidating information and data into a single draft budget for the institution;
Collecting, processing, and analyzing, for the benefit of committees, groups, and individual lawmakers, the sources of national revenues and objects of expenditures; as well as other vital socio-economic data necessary to understand, predict, and project the state of the national economy; and
Producing periodic and critical socio-economic reports for the benefit of lawmakers in the performance of their monitoring and oversight responsibilities.

The LBO provides technical support to the Legislature’s Statutory Committees and other members. The Directors and staff of the LBO have expertise in finance, economics, accounting, budgeting, and public policy administration.