The inception meeting at the Law Reform Commission headquarters in Monrovia brought together the commission’s chair and chief executive Bornor M. Varmah, the MCC country director for Liberia, and the national coordinator of the Liberia Compact Development Team, the government’s technical team running compact negotiations. The discussions focused on establishing a framework to review the existing mining law, identify legislative gaps, and align reforms with the compact’s requirements and timelines.
Liberia’s current mining law is more than two decades old, and a mining policy adopted in 2010 was never followed by a new law, leaving the sector governed by piecemeal amendments. The development team plans to draft a new mining law and a model mineral development agreement by the end of 2027, and to begin an airborne geophysical survey in the Harper Quadrangle so the government knows what lies underground before it negotiates with investors. A separate September review estimated drafting and legislative passage could take about 18 months at a cost of US$1.5 million to US$2 million.
The commission also cautioned lawmakers to protect existing mining agreements approved by the legislature while applying new requirements on refining, metals and state equity to future licenses, and urged that a proposed Gold Sector Reform Amendment Act be folded into the broader rewrite rather than pursued as separate legislation. The mining sector drove 70 percent of Liberia’s national economic growth over the past year, according to the finance ministry.