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The UNCTAD DMFAS Programme and the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa (MEFMI) have been actively cooperating in the area of public debt management for many years. Of the 14 MEFMI member countries, six are active DMFAS users, namely Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In 2021, DMFAS and MEFMI co-delivered several technical assistance activities including one national and one regional workshops to strengthen countries’ capacity to effectively record and report on public debt using DMFAS 6.
Zambia DMFAS 6 online training
In May 2021, the DMFAS Programme and MEFMI provided remote technical and functional DMFAS training to the Ministry of Finance of Zambia.
This remote technical training reviewed the DMFAS installation in Zambia and strengthened technical skills to maintain the system. The objective of the functional training was to strengthen domestic debt recording in DMFAS and assist in updating the DMFAS database with domestic debt securities.
Training sessions were flexibly organized over the last three months of 2021, adapting to the debt office’s working schedules. By the end of the training, debt officers in Zambia had an up-dated method for the recording of reopenings to complete the DMFAS database with all issued government debt securities.
DMFAS 6 online regional workshop
In response to the challenges faced by debt management offices in relation to high staff turnover, DMFAS and MEFMI proposed a regional workshop to refresh the knowledge on DMFAS 6 modules and functionalities and to train new debt officers on recording, reporting and analyzing debt using the DMFAS software.
This remote regional workshop took place in November 2021, and was attended by participants from Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The workshop covered data entry modules and reporting features. The work focused on new and advanced features such as: Data validation on recording, historical estimated drawings, handling DSSI operations, exporting reports to excel, in addition to new operation types like commission refunds. Moreover, the workshop introduced two new modules for Version 6.2: the nominal value calculation and reporting for debt securities and the preparation of data for the MTDS tool. Finally, experts provided clarifications on country-specific issues.
The cooperation between the DMFAS Programme and MEFMI will continue in 2022.