The Gambia Monday began playing host to a week-long regional training programme on ”public sector debt statistics”.
The main objectives of the training programme are geared towards equipping participants with thorough understanding of the conceptual framework like the compilation principles and practices of public sector debt statistics.
According to sources, the programme is also geared towards helping participants with a comprehensive guidance for the measurement, quality assessment and presentation of public debt statistics.
Oumie Samba Savage, the deputy governor of Gambia’s Central Bank, who addressed the opening session, described the training programme as both timely and important in view of current economic developments.
Mrs. Oumie also said the programme would help in strengthening the overall debt management capacity in the sub-region.
According to her, the economic and financial crises experienced in 1990s and 2009 have shown that inadequate statistics on public sector debts looms large among the panoply of facilitators inhibiting a country’s ability to address vulnerabilities arising from solvency and liquidity problems.
“Experience from the recent debt crisis in the Euro area has again dramatized that these vulnerabilities can be costly and widespread in our globalized world of macro-economic interrelatedness,” she added.
The programme is said to be jointly organised by the Commonwealh Secretariat, the International Monetary Fund and West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management.
Participants are said to be drawn from English-speaking countries within the region.
