ABSTRACT
This chapter synthesises the concessionary economic policies and argues that Liberia's rapid Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is in fact masking low-quality growth. Like the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the Liberian state-building framework has understated the role of natural resource management. Economic policies and related capacity building have instead focused on fiscal discipline for the purposes of debt relief and future debt servicing. The chapter capitalises on the findings of multi-stakeholder interviews commissioned by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Liberia Governance Stakeholder Survey. It describes the legal framework of concessions, the institutional arrangement of concession negotiations and their oversight. The chapter also describes the local experience of a palm oil project in Liberia. The Liberian Mining Company was the largest taxpayers. In post-conflict Liberia, the mining sector drives economic growth. The chapter then outlines the Liberian land conflict, its historical background, confusing tenure system and land law reforms.
