Report by Nyantee Togba_nyanteetogba@gmail.com
For the first time under the CDC led government, the Liberian Senate has endorsed recommendations from its committee on banking and currency to deny the confirmation of three board members designate at the Central Bank of Liberia.
The decision was due to the lack of requisite experience.
The three officials were among the list of several individuals who were nominated by President George Weah on June 18, 2019.
The three CBL officials designate denied confirmation by the Senate are Timothy Thomas, James Dennis, and Richard Dolley.
The Senate committee on Banking and Currency mentioned in its report that the three CBL nominees have the academic qualification but lack the experience and institutional knowledge to serve as members on the CBL Board of Governors.
The committee furthered in its report that the three CBL officials designate are unable to resuscitate the economy from its bad state.
“Due to the downturn in the economy status right now, we want more proactive people to be recruited that would be robust in dealing with the situation. The situation we have now requires policies that would resuscitate the economy in the shortest possible time otherwise the masses of our people will continue to suffer.
“We need more robust people right now, people with the knowhow to their fingertips to be able to join the Central Bank to see how we can turn the wheels. Due to the Committee’s cross examination, we don’t want to believe that these nominees have these characteristics. They may have experiences in banking but they don’t have the expertise to deal with contemporary issues.”
At the confirmation on Thursday, July 4, one of those denied by the senate, James Dennis said the Technical Economic Management Team (TEMT) was in “tactical error,” to have left commercial banks out of the $US 25M Mop Up exercise.
Dennis stated that the TEMT should have used commercial banks to carry out the mop-up, which according to him, would have been the only effective way of achieving the aim of the exercise.
When quizzed by Maryland County’s Senator Gbleh-Bo Brown, concerning internal controls at the Central Bank, another board member designate, Richard Dolley said
“Internal control policy can be in place but if we choose to ignore them then they are not there. For example on the case of the US$25 million, how to handle it, obviously there were no clearly defined policy or procedure so no internal controls were designed for it,” Dolley stated.
“If we are confirmed, we will look at these audit reports and see how we can redesign a strategic plan for the CBL. CBL is a policy-oriented institution. It’s not a factory. The policies are there but people knowingly or unknowingly ignore them.
