(Bloomberg) -- Liberia will pursue “aggressive” monetary and fiscal policies in the coming weeks to improve the country’s economy and calm inflation, President George Weah said.
The 25 percent drop in the Liberian dollar against the greenback in July has raised prices of gasoline and fuel, prompting the central bank to pump $25 million into the economy to address instability in the currency market, Weah said in a radio broadcast Monday.
“I am fully aware of the negative impact of the declining exchange rate on the economic well-being of the Liberian people, and the serious hardship that this is beginning to cause,” Weah said. “We ask our people for patience.”
The former A.C. Milan player came to power in January after pledging to turn-around the economy of one of the world’s poorest nations. Gross domestic product contracted 1.6 percent in 2016 following a slump in iron-ore prices and the fallout from the Ebola crisis, which at its peak in 2014 isolated the country and claimed thousands of lives.
The central bank forecasts that GDP growth will accelerate to 3.2 percent this year, from 2.5 percent in 2017.
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