- March 17, 2022
- Posted by: admin
- Categories: Current News, debt management
MEFMI and the Commonwealth Secretariat (COMSEC) undertook a joint mission to Maputo Mozambique from 31 January to 25 February 2022. The Mission aimed at assisting the Ministry of Economy and Finance to validate its public debt database currently maintained in the Commonwealth Secretariat Debt Recording and Management System (CS-DRMS). This exercise was conducted in preparation for migrating debt data from the CS-DRMS, which is being phased out by COMSEC by end of 2022, to a new debt management system known as Commonwealth Secretariat (CS) Meridian. CS Meridian is a state-of-the-art web-based debt recording and management system aimed at helping countries to proactively manage their public debt portfolios. The Mission was a follow-up to an earlier MEFMI Mission to Mozambique which assessed the readiness of the public debt database for migration to the CS Meridian.
The Mission mainly involved working with the country officials to check and correct the debt data records in the CS-DRMS. In addition, meetings were held with government officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Centre for the Development of Financial Information Systems (CEDSIF) and the World Bank country office in Maputo to discuss progress made in implementing the activity, assess the availability of hardware and software requirements for Meridian as well as discuss areas of collaboration, respectively.
The main output of the Mission was an updated debt database which is ready for migration to the CS-Meridian as well as a report detailing the work done during the Mission. The report also included findings and recommendations on the next steps on migration. MEFMI and its technical cooperating partners will continue to provide assistance in order to ensure that the migration project is successful.
The Mission was led by Mr Jason Kamweru (an independent consultant) who was supported by Ms Tiyamika Kanthambi (a MEFMI Graduate Fellow, Ministry of Finance in Malawi), Dr Felister Kivisi (a MEFMI Graduate Fellow and Sovereign Debt Advisor at the Trade and Development Bank), Ms Josephine Tito (MEFMI Programme Manager) and Mr Mac Banda of the Commonwealth Secretariat.