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Claim: Benedict Kolubah said the Central Bank of Liberia’s (CBL) second-quarter report for 2025 placed inflation at 13.7%.
Verdict: False. The CBL reported inflation for the second quarter of 2025 as 11.1%. The 13.7% referenced by Benedict was the rate of less “food and transport prices.”
Full Text
Former Assistant Minister Benedict Kolubah stated on a live debate that Liberia’s inflation reached 13.7% as of June 2025.
Benedict said the governing Unity Party (UP) is carrying out many activities, but they are not translating into anything impactful.
Mohammed Ali, the managing director of the Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation (LWSC), objected to Benedict’s comments. He said, “inflation moderated from 12.5% to 11.1%,” around the second quarter of the year, spanning the same time Kolubah spoke about.
Mohammed accused Benedict of spreading false information about inflation in the country. This sparked an argument between the duo.
Their disagreement occurred from 1:15:35 to 1:22:40 of the show.
As of Sept. 24, 2025, the show had 30,000 views, 1,5000 comments, 485 reactions and 126 shares.
The confusion this argument stirred in the minds of those following the debate, and a verification request made DUBAWA investigate the claim.
Verification
An investigation into official reports from the Central Bank of Liberia and other credible international financial institutions confirms that the figures cited by both individuals refer to different economic indicators, and not the same metric.
According to the CBL’s Monetary Policy Committee Communiqué from July 2025, inflation moderated to 11.1% in the second quarter of 2025, down from 12.5% in the year’s first quarter. This report aligns directly with Mohammed’s figure.
The 11.1% figure is a historical, year-on-year average, particularly cited on page four of the above report for the April-June 2025 quarter.
The same Central Bank monthly economic report on page one (4/12) also notes that core inflation (which excludes volatile food and transport prices) was 13.7% in June 2025. This likely explains Benedict’s citation, but it is not the overall, or “headline,” inflation rate.
It is also important to distinguish these quarterly figures from the full-year forecasts for 2025.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have projected Liberia’s overall inflation to around 8.2% for the entire year 2025. This figure is a forward-looking forecast, not a current, quarterly measure.
The CBL also projects a continued moderation in consumer prices, with a forecast of 10.3% for the third quarter of 2025. This shows a downward trend towards the international projections. These assertion was made on Sept. 15, 2025, during the show on OK FM in Monrovia
Conclusion
Benedict Kolubah’s assertion that Liberia’s second-quarter inflation rate was 13.7% is false as an overall inflation figure. However, a rate of 13.7% was noted as a component of inflation in a recent CBL report.
