Mauritius and IMF Sign MoU for the Establishment of AFRITAC South

Mauritius and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signed on 18th April in Washington a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the establishment of the Africa Regional Technical Assistance Center South (AFRITAC South) in Mauritius.

The MoU was signed by the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Jugnauth, and the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Ms. Nemat Shafik.

The setting up of the AFRITAC South is in line with the government's objective to transform Mauritius into a knowledge hub. The Center will be operational in July 2011 and will cover 13 countries in Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean, bringing AFRITAC coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa to 37 countries.

AFRITAC South will provide technical assistance to countries for developing and implementing capacity-building programmes in several areas, such as macroeconomic policy, macro-fiscal policy and public financial management. The Center will also work closely with the Regional Multidisciplinary Centre of Excellence (RMCE) and the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) and will act as a vehicle to export Mauritian expertise in public sector management to the rest of Africa. Mauritius will, in addition, benefit from technical assistance free of cost.

Speaking during the signing ceremony, Mr Jugnauth said that the approach adopted for the operation of the Center will not only allow Mauritius to collectively define its needs but more importantly to obtain just-in-time advice in a rapidly changing world where predictability has become an issue. In his opinion the flexible approach and the immediate availability of expertise will help the Southern African economies to be more proactive and effective in formulating the right responses to economic and financial challenges.

For the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, Ms. Shafik, AFRITAC South will be the IMF's eighth regional technical assistance center and its fourth center in Africa, joining the other institutions across the continent, namely AFRITACs Center, East, and West. According to her, regional technical assistance centers have become a linchpin in the IMF's technical assistance programme, covering a large proportion of low-income countries and delivering an increasing percentage of its total technical assistance.

The AFRITACS are part of the IMF's Africa capacity-building initiative launched in May 2002. As a response to calls from African leaders, the initiative promotes the strengthening of the capacity of African countries to design and implement their poverty-reducing strategies as well as to improve the coordination of capacity-building technical assistance. The AFRITACs provide technical assistance in the core areas of expertise of the IMF on a grant basis. They are financed by contributions from the beneficiary countries, bilateral and multilateral donors, and the IMF. It will be recalled that work is in progress for the setting up of a similar center in Ghana to cover Anglophone countries in West Africa (AFRITAC West 2).