Did Activist Martin K.N. Kollie Get Facts Right about Liberia Poverty Rate?

Monrovia – Young Liberian activist Martin KN. Kolllie recently made a Facebook post which generated many concerns from Facebook users about the state of the Liberia economy. In the post, Kolllie referenced a World Bank Report on the Liberia’s economy.

Report by: Varney Kelvin Sirleaf | LVL Fact Checker

Wrote Kollie on his Facebook page on May 3, 2022: “The World Bank has reported that people living below poverty in Liberia has increased from 55.5 percent in 2019 to 68.9 percent. This means that 526,000 more Liberians who were not poor are now poor.”

The data he referenced is a June 2020 World Bank Report which is an estimation. It states that, “The share of the population living below the national poverty line is projected to increase from 55.5 percent in 2019 to 65.2 percent in 2020 under the baseline scenario and reach 68.9 percent under the downside scenario.”

However, a World Bank Report released in June 2021 states that “The proportion of households falling below the extreme poverty line is estimated at 51.0 percent in 2020, up from 38.6 percent in 2014.”

By these data provided above, the data cited by Kollie in his Facebook post is a 2019 data released by the World Bank in 2020. This is not the most recent data from the World Bank about Liberia’s poverty rate.

The June 2021 Report of the Bank on Liberia is a compilation of 2020 data which estimate that people living below the poverty line in the country is at 51.0%.

Conclusion

Based on our research, it is proven that the claim made by activist Martin K.N Kollie is a projection of what would happen but not the data of a recent World Bank report.

Kollie’s relied on a 2020 report of the Bank’s statement on Liberia economic update. It is important to note that his reliance is not the most recent of the Bank’s publication of the country’s economic updates.

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