MTDS training workshop concluded in Shanghai
On November 16, 2012, the five-day training workshop on Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) came to a successful conclusion in Shanghai. The workshop was jointly organized by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in collaboration with the Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Center (AFDC).
The MTDS has been developed in partnership with the World Bank's Treasury Department and the IMF. MTDS provides a framework for formulating and implementing a debt management strategy for the medium term. It is primarily focused on determining the appropriate composition of the debt portfolio, taking into account macroeconomic indicators and market environment. MTDS is useful for illustrating government’s cost and risk tradeoffs associated with different debt management strategies and for managing the risk exposure embedded in a debt portfolio, in particular the potential variation in debt servicing costs and its budgetary impact.
The workshop attracts 20 participants from the Ministries of Finance and Central Bank of 16 Asian developing countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam as well as one UN official from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
The opening ceremony was held on the morning of November 12. Dr. Peng Runzhong, Director of AFDC, and Mr. Tihomir Stucka, economist at the Economic Policy and Debt Department of the World Bank, who is also the core instructor of the training workshop, delivered opening remarks respectively on behalf of the co-organizers of the training.
During the five days’ training, the workshop introduced participants to the toolkit developed to assist governments to develop an MTDS which consists of the Guidance Note, a comprehensive framework for developing an MTDS, and the Analytical Tool. Both the process involved in developing an MTDS and hands-on exercises using the spreadsheet model were covered at the workshop.
At the end of the workshop, all the participants participated in a quiz to test their understanding of the MTDS framework and the quantitative technique for developing an MTDS. As the results showed, there had been an evident progress in their understanding of the MTDS concept and the technique and an increased awareness of how the debt management process can be enriched by such an analytical framework.
As one participant wrote in a Thank-you Note, “The MTDS training program was really full of learning and discovering something new. I personally enjoyed the training program a lot. Hope that this training will help me to contribute in conducting the MTDS in our country.” AFDC will continue to cooperate with the World Bank and other partners to organize training workshops on such important topics in the future.
