Somalia’s foreign minister and IMF hold talks in Addis Ababa

[Deeq A.]

Somali minister for Finance, Abdirahman Baileh has talked with official International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia.

In a Twitter post, the minister said he discussed with the officials over means to review the Staff-Monitored Program (SMP).

The minister hoped that the meeting offered an opportunity to further discussed the SMP.

“Today we have started SMP review with our colleagues from the IMF in #AddisAbaba. This review gives both sides an opportunity to finalise SMP III. We look forward to productive &positive discussions in the comings days on the next program. Reforms are key to Somalia‘s progress,” the twitter reads.

The third staff-monitored programme is planned to run between May 2018-April 2019.

The program will focus on broadening and deepening reform implementation to maintain macroeconomic stability and to continue rebuilding institutions and capacity to improve macroeconomic management and governance.

SMP III is aimed at building achievements under the previous two SMPs.

It will continue to lay the foundation so that Somalia will eventually have a SMP that meets the IMF Upper Credit Tranche (UCT) conditionality which is one of the key requirements for Somalia to reach the Decision Point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

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