South Sudan urges technical support for financial development strategies
May 23, 2024 (JUBA) – South Sudan has urged technical support to develop financial development strategies aimed at widening its narrow market.
The move, officials say, will boost efforts to measure economic performances.
On Tuesday, South Sudan`s Ministry of Finance and the Bank of South Sudan on signed a Memorandum of Understanding to officially join the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute (MEFMI) of Eastern and Southern Africa.
The MEFMI is an intergovernmental regional capacity-building organization that designs and delivers customized capacity-building programs to client institutions in priority areas of sovereign debt, macroeconomic, and financial sector management to support economic and financial stability in its member countries.
South Sudan’s Central Bank Governor, James Alic Garang said membership in the MEFMI will benefit the country’s finance ministry in terms of capacity building in debt management, debt transparency, debt reporting as well as debt recording.
He further said that the Central Bank would benefit in terms of essential areas of the economy like macroeconomic forecasting and reserve management.
“What we have joined today is an institute that has done so much in southern Africa,” said Garang.
“In this country, we depend so much on a narrow market and that is the foreign exchange market but there are other markets that we have not developed like the bond market and development of financial markets that we see in Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana and other places,” he added.
The Executive Director for MEFMI, Louis Austin Kasekende commended decision of the government of South Sudan to join the institution focusing on macroeconomic management, debt management and financial sector development.
He said they pride themselves in responding to the capacity needs of a country so they will build the capacity of South Sudan depending on the training needs.
“We organize intermediate training, and we also have advanced courses, so, we will be in discussions with the ministry and the Central Bank and agree at the point of entry, should it be foundation, intermediate, or advanced, it could even be a mix,” stressed Kasekende.
“We are in a very evolving environment, 15 years ago, few central banks could have even talked about climate change, technology, intelligence, machine learning in the way we conduct our work. We pride ourselves by also studying that environment and helping our countries to respond to these evolving challenges”, he added.
For his part, Agok Makur Kur, South Sudan`s Deputy Minister of Finance and planning, said joining the MEFMI will benefit the country in terms of capacity building and human resources
“To be part of this MEFMI, we will benefit as South Sudan especially in the ministry of finance and central bank, in terms of capacity building and human resources,” assured Kur.
He added, “We will also not only learn about debt management and macroeconomics but we can also go beyond, as you know, we have many resources on the African continent that need to be used through this MEFMI. Through training and capacity building, we can use our resources”.
The official said South Sudan will immediately pay membership fees to MEFMI.
(ST)