By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Ghana and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a new Africa Regional Technical Assistance Centre (AFRITAC) in Accra, Ghana, West African Sub Region.

Seth Terkper, Finance Minister of Ghana, and Ms. Nemat Shafik, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signed the MoU to AFRITAC in Washington, DC, United States (US).

According to the IMF, the center, known as AFRITAC West 2, will serve Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, complementing a network of existing AFRITACs in Gabon, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mauritius.

The IMF says AFRITAC West 2 will be its ninth (9^th) regional technical assistance center worldwide and fifth (5^th) center in sub-Saharan Africa, fulfilling its commitment to extend the AFRITAC network to all sub-Saharan African countries.

At the signing in ceremony, Shafik said regional technical assistance centers have become a staple of the IMF’s capacity development efforts, covering a large group of low- and middle-income countries and delivering an increasing share of its overall technical assistance.

The IMF affirmed that the centers are flexible, and their staffs know well the potential and challenges of the environments in which they operate. “This contributes to delivering effective, responsive, realistic, and sustainable technical assistance, as well as ‘good value for money’ to both recipient countries and the donours that support them,” Shafik said.

In the same vein, Terkper,  said the approach adopted for the operations and governance structure of AFRITAC West 2 will allow the IMF obtain demand-driven, hands-on advice in a rapidly changing world where predictability has increasingly become an issue.

“I am confident that this flexible approach and the availability of immediate, high-level expertise for many years to come will help policymakers in the AFRITAC West 2 member countries formulate even better responses to our economic and financial challenges” Terkper said.