DMO Calls For Stronger Economic Cooperation With African Countries

The DMO boss who stated this while receiving the ministry of finance and economic planning (MOFEP), Republic of South Sudan, who came on a 5-day study tour to unravel the success story of the Nigerian domestic bond market, said the visit should be the beginning of a better relationship between Nigeria’s DMO and the South Sudan government.

The visit by the South Sudanese delegation comprising of some of its senior management and middle level officers which will last from Monday, November 30, to Friday December 4, 2015, was prompted by the gargantuan achievement, national impact, and global recognition, of Nigeria’s DMO.

The main purpose of the study Tour is for the delegation to gain insight into the developmental initiatives undertaken by the DMO which have led to the remarkable growth and development of Nigeria’s Debt Management Office and the unprecedented success of the FGN Bond Market.

In the past, the DMO has hosted officials of various African countries on similar study tours and provided attachments for some of the countries. Some of the countries include Uganda, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

According to Nwankwo, “the hosting of officials of different countries on such study tours and provision of attachment programmes are an integral part of the DMO’s strategic objective of making Nigeria a major destination for out-sourced debt management skills and services.”

The DMO Boss further noted that the DMO has packaged series of presentations on different areas of public debt management, in order for the visiting officials to achieve maximum benefit from the study Tour.

Speaking on the objectives of their visit to the country, the Director General, Directorate of Macroeconomic Planning, Philip Ajack Boldit, who led the delegation, said South Sudan was keen to learning the various strategic debt management plans that DMO Nigeria has, adding that they came with high expectations.

Boldit said, “We have a very high expectation, Nigeria and South Sudan has got a lot of similarities, we have oil discovered, Nigeria has oil discovered, prior to the discovery of oil our economic background was agriculture, and whether a good reason or not we neglected that and we are now feeling it after the oil prices had dropped drastically, and there is now a revival that we got to go back and we expect to get a lot of experience in skill transfer from Nigeria to South Sudan, especially on how to manage the debt, it is one thing to get it done, it is another thing to manage it.

“Nigeria got the experience, and as I said before we have got similarities and with our visit here, we will pick up a lot of experience which we can apply to our situation to be better and be able to manage our debt like Nigeria did.”

When asked what the current debt profile of South Sudan is like, he said, “The debt profile, we are actually mainly borrowing locally, the foreign borrowing is not possible because of the insecurity and because of the war we had.

“We have a very high inflation which can only be brought back should we device means and ways on controlling and managing our debts properly,” Boldit said.