The Liberian government has made significant progress since the elections in 2005 including achieving macroeconomic stability, strong output growth and price stability as a result of an ambitious macroeconomic reform programme. The reform programme partly focused on implementing strong policies and systems to manage its debt, supported by new laws on financial management.
A newly formed Debt Management Unit was established within the finance ministry with prime responsibility for debt management and one of its first tasks was to ensure it had recorded all of the country's debts. With support from Crown Agents, the Debt Management Unit computerised all of its debt obligations using the Commonwealth Secretariat's Debt Recording and Management System (CS-DRMS).
This system allows the government to monitor its debt obligations and was vital in enabling the country to qualify for $4.6 billion of debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in June 2010. Since installing the system, Crown Agents has continued to support the Debt Management Unit in establishing stronger procedures and control mechanisms. It has also trained staff in understanding the implications of loan agreements, as well as using CS-DRMS to meet international and national reporting requirements, assess debt sustainability and undertake restructuring operations.
Mr Jonathan Geegbae, Head of the Debt Management Unit, said: "Before CS-DRMS was introduced we had no debt management software at all, and had to rely on lots of spreadsheets, which became increasingly burdensome and time consuming. This robust system is a huge advantage as we are now able to easily access data, which simply wasn't readily available before. It makes our debt analysis much easier and consequently we are in a much better position than we were six months ago." Crown Agents is the official distributor of CS-DRMS to non-Commonwealth countries.