Monrovia – the Central Bank of Liberia and partners has launched the Financial Sector Development Plan (FSDI) which seeks to prioritize, sequence and time-bound road map for 63 implementing reforms.
Report by Bettie K. Johnson-Mbayo/ [email protected]
The sector include banking, and insurance supervision, credit information system, payment systems, digital finance, social security, financial inclusion, enterprise access to finance and anti-money-laundering/ countering financing of terrorism.
The FSDI seeks to provide donor guide to the Government of Liberia’s financial sector development priorities to help assess where and how the donor assistance can complement government priorities.
Implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the FSDI will require the continuance of the financial sector committee that oversaw the creation of the road map as well as the creation of a financial sector development secretariat and working groups.
The steering committee will play principal role in overseeing the implementation of the FSDI, its members are senior-level representatives from the Central Bank, ministry of Finance, Commerce, Justice, NASSCORP, and Bankers Association and will be chair by the Deputy Governor of the CBL.
A small FSDIP secretariat will be established by and report to the financial sector steering committee which will consist of technical experts from CBL and World Bank consultant.
Accordingly, the role of the secretariat is to support the work of the working groups and report barriers to the steering committee ad will also be responsible for managing the implementation of the FSDIP and supervision of the thematic working groups.
Each of the working group according the CBL Governor Milton weeks will have a legal and regulatory component to achieving the proposed reforms.
“At the preparation phase of the reform process, each of the working group will be responsible for developing cost estimates and results targets for the distinct work channels.
“These will be consolidated and assessed by the secretariat and steering committee for realism and value of money, the steering committee will work with development partners in this process and pass on recommendations to the Government for final approval,” Mr. Weeks said.
The program was in conjunction with World Bank, First Initiative, and Central Bank.
There were several speeches made by representatives of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Ministry of Finance and others.
For his part, Vice President Joseph Boakai lauded the organizers and but called for legislation to strengthen financial institutions.
“There is no denial that the financial sector has been new to the turbulent and has been a challenged when it’s compared to others in the Sub-region, the existing financial system is narrow and need to be review, said Ambassador Boakai.
Ambassador Boakai said the country was dominated by banks and insurance companies and there was a need for legal review of the access to pension.
