The Government of Liberia and the visiting Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Mission have been holding high-level discussions on how to develop a Compact for Liberia's potential MCC project.

Finance Minister Amara Konneh, who coordinates the MCC Compact development project for Liberia on Wednesday, began holding series of meetings with the US delegation, including a meeting of the Economic Transformation Pillar of the Liberian Development Alliance at the Ministry.

During the meetings, the MCC delegation headed by Sheila Herrling, Vice President for Policy and Evaluation lauded the Government for strong performance against the MCC indicators, on the $15 million threshold program to improve land rights and access; girls' primary education and trade policy as well as Liberia's eligibility to develop a compact program, which was announced in December 2012.

Minister Konneh informed the delegation, including Jonathan Bloom, Deputy Vice President for West Africa Compact Development and John Underwood, Chief Economist and Managing Director for Economic Analysis, that a Compact Development Taskforce has been established by the Government to begin recruiting a team of experts.

According to Minister Konneh, the Government, in partnership with the development partners, civil society and the private sector have agreed to conduct an open dialogue on how they would share existing analyses with the MCC, so that the Compact development can commence as quickly as possible.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an innovative and independent U.S. foreign aid agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty. MCC forms partnerships with some of the world's poorest countries, but only those committed to good governance, economic freedom, and investments in their citizens.

MCC provides these well-performing countries with large-scale grants to fund country-led solutions for reducing poverty through sustainable economic growth. Liberia currently has threshold programs. Following strong performance in the indicators, the MCC announced in December that Liberia is eligible to develop a compact program.