- May 18, 2022
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Current News
The Zambia Ministry of Finance and National Planning has signed a Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF). To achieve the facility’s goals, critical reforms will be implemented including structural benchmarks which constitute measures to improve and monitor fiscal operations in Zambia such as the development of a Fiscal Risk Management Framework by June 2022. The Framework is expected to set guidelines and act as a management tool for identifying, mitigating, and monitoring fiscal risks arising from unanticipated expenditure pressures and shocks that may adversely widen the fiscal deficit and impact budget execution over the medium-term in Zambia.
In this context, the Ministry of Finance and National Planning of Zambia requested MEFMI to provide face-to-face and hands-on technical assistance on fiscal risks management tools from 4 to 18 April 2022 as well as to assist the Ministry to develop a fiscal risk management framework by June 2022. The objective of the mission was to provide technical assistance to the staff of the Ministry of Finance and National Planning in developing fiscal risk assessment tools. The mission also set to validate and align the draft fiscal risk management framework and the implementation plan currently being developed by the Ministry.
MEFMI trained seventeen participants from five departments in the Ministry of Finance and National Planning of Zambia. The departments included Economic Management, Debt, Budget, Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Risk Management. Of the 17 participants, ten (59 percent) were male while seven (41 percent) were female. The mission was facilitated by three resource persons, namely Mr. Wilson Asiimwe (MEFMI Graduate Fellow and Senior Economic Modeler at Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Uganda); Dr. Emmanuel Sekyere (Chief Research Specialist, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Republic of South Africa); and Mr. Senei Molapo (MEFMI Graduate Fellow and MEFMI Programme Manager).