The Tribune

The Central Bank has signed an agreement with the Commonwealth Secretariat to help modernise the legal framework for managing the Government's multi-billion dollar debt.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) provides for the joint funding of technical assistance (TA), and is the first jointly funded donor-recipient TA arrangement that the Commonwealth Secretariat has sponsored.

The Secretariat will arrange technical assistance to develop a consolidated draft law for Government Debt Management in the Bahamas, with the project's implementation set to begin in September 2017.

The TA is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance and the Public Treasury to improve the pricing model for issued government debt; strengthen debt management services provided by the Central Bank; and boost secondary market trading in Government debt.

The modernisation strategy will provide for the dematerialisation of bond certificates, meaning that holders of government debt will no longer have to rely on manual certificates to prove ownership. This will instead be recorded by an electronic securities depository for all issued bonds.

The total number of outstanding government debt tranches will also be consolidated to aid secondary market activity. Earlier TA from the Commonwealth Secretariat provided a "road map" to reach this point.

Patricia Scotland, the Commonwealth's secretary-general, met with John Rolle, governor of the Central Bank, on July 19 while in Nassau to attend the Commonwealth Youth Games. They agreed to continue to partner and share information in areas such as exchange control liberalisation, trade, technology and financial inclusion.