The West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), in collaboration with Common Wealth Secretariat (COMSEC), is holding a one week workshop on using commonwealth meridian for fiscal debt data compilation, reporting and monitoring.
The workshop will bring together member countries from five West African countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Nigeria and Ghana, with the purpose of effectively and efficiently mobilizing domestic and external resources to address developmental challenges.
According to the Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), J. Aloysius Tarlue Jr., who served as the keynote speaker, “Fundamental to the efforts addressing these challenges would be the strengthening of not only our fiscal management, but most specifically aligning our medium-term public debt management strategies with our national development objective.”
Significantly, he added, the recent global developments, including the COVID-19 pandemic shocks and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, have resulted into expanding public liabilities of developing countries and elevation of risk factors in the public debt arena. Governor Tarlue further noted that, given the context, it is apposite that attention is being given to public data.
“Indeed, the centrality of public debt in public debt management operations has long been globally recognized as foundational to formulating, implementing and monitoring public debt strategies. The maintenance and availability of comprehensive, complete, accurate and timely public debt databases not only ensure that servicing of debt obligations is on time and payments are accurate, but also enhances accountability and transparency of public debt operations,” the Central Bank Governor asserted.
The week-long workshop will allow financial professionals from the WAIFEM countries to brainstorm on methods and solutions using commonwealth meridian for fiscal debt data compilation, reporting and monitoring, with key focus on public and publicly guaranteed debt, lending portfolios and private sector external debt can be recorded, managed, and analyzed; customizable deployment of the solution in centralized, decentralized, and hybrid environments defined by member countries’ IT and institutional infrastructure; configurable around the delivery to key stakeholders, for example, the Ministry of Finance, Debt Management office, Central Bank, various funding agencies and project implementing agencies, thus streamlining the information flow between the multiple entities; the ability to model any workflow arrangement and institutional structure for debt management; provides flexibility in adding and maintaining a wide range of financing products, including any future financing products using instrument templates; organized around a central repository of data from which key stakeholders can access information to ensure that real time data is always available, even in remote offices; driven by alerts and notifications, integrated with mail exchange systems to support the business workflow process; fosters accountability and transparency through data-driven workflow; and integrates with external systems to provide straight through processing and accurate data to stakeholders.
The general expectation is that participants will be able to use the knowledge and skills acquired from the training to use the commonwealth meridian to compile, disseminate and monitor the debt portfolio of their respective countries based on international best practices.
