IMF establishes technical centre in Bamako

A West Africa Regional Technical Assistance Center (West AFRITAC) was inaugurated on Thursday by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the Malian capital, Bamako, to support capacity building activities in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo. West AFRITAC will implement its programmes through a team of resident experts, supplemented by short-term specialists in various areas of expertise, IMF said in a news release on Thursday. These include macroeconomic policy, debt management and microfinance, financial sector policies, tax policy and revenue administration, public expenditure management and macroeconomic statistics. It is part of the IMF's Africa Capacity-Building Initiative that was launched in 2002 in support of African governments including in the context of the New Partnership for Africa (NEPAD). The Fund said it aims to increase significantly its capacity-building assistance to African government to strengthen their capacity to formulate and implement growth oriented, poverty reducing policies in the context of countries' Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. The first regional center, the East AFRITAC, was inaugurated in October 2002 in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. To date, it has been involved in more than 20 capacity-building projects in the East Africa region, the release said. If the operations of the first two centers are successful, additional centers could be opened to serve all sub-Saharan Africa, it added.