Liberia Revenue Authority Commissioner General James Dorbor Jallah told the fourth Kapa Kulono town hall in Tubmanburg on Friday that Liberia had crossed a historic US$1 billion in domestic collections in mid-September, with mining accounting for about US$432 million of the US$1.059 billion on the books by the time he spoke. The sector’s trajectory is steep: Jallah put mining-related revenue at about US$54 million in 2020, US$60.9 million in 2021, US$115 million in 2022, US$144 million in 2023, US$137 million in 2024 and US$181 million in 2025, before the jump to US$432 million this year. The authority hopes to close 2026 at about US$1.3 billion.
The headline number carries an explicit caveat from the commissioner general himself: the US$1.059 billion is unreconciled, because some collections from locations still being brought onto automated systems have not yet been captured. Jallah pointed to a new public revenue dashboard intended to let citizens track collections themselves. The milestone measures what was collected, not how it was spent, and the town hall’s theme, “Beyond the Boom: Transparency, Value Addition and Sustainable Fiscal Impact,” kept returning to the gap between national revenue claims and the roads, clinics and classrooms in mining communities.
Mines and Energy Minister R. Matenokay Tingban used the platform to press the government’s value-addition line: Liberia must stop exporting minerals in raw form and process more domestically, converting extraction into jobs, infrastructure and skills. The Protect Our Resources Taskforce, meanwhile, framed the enforcement side. Taskforce official Abraham S. Kromah told the gathering that 70 to 90 percent of national gold production may be undocumented, a loss he put at US$150 million to US$450 million a year, and spoke of more than 480 excavators operating in sensitive areas including the Gola reserve. Analyst Liberia cautions that these are claims, not audited findings, but notes that even the lower figure would exceed everything the mining sector paid the state in 2023.
The revenue milestone lands as Liberia works toward a mining-law rewrite (targeted before 2027) that is expected to reshape royalties, local processing requirements and license terms. The test that follows Friday’s numbers is mechanical: the revenue authority must reconcile and publish its final 2026 figure with mining revenue broken down by company and county, and the finance ministry must show how much of it returns to the mining-affected counties. Watch ArcelorMittal, Bea Mountain and the artisanal gold trade as the law takes shape.