Momodou Bamba Saho, the governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia has disclosed that the presence of structural and persistent excess liquidity has made liquidity management in most African countries even more difficult. He attributed it to the presence of asymmetric information, fiscal dominance, limited competition in the financial sector and the underdeveloped nature of money market.

Governor Saho made these remarks Monday at Jerma Beach Hotel in Koloi while delivering his keynote address at the start of a week-long training course for at least 35 participants from the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) member countries on liquidity for physical and monetary management. He said: 'Commercial banks' optimising behaviour could mean that banks hold voluntary excesses due to uncertainty or risk of default. Also, where the banking infrastructure is inadequate, commercial banks may hold excess liquidity because they are unable to track their position at the Central Bank on real time because of undeveloped payment systems."

The CBG governor further spoke on the need for efficient liquidity management, as according to him, it is at the very heart of the conduct of monetary policy. He also explained that the impact of the recent global financial crisis has demonstrated the importance of liquidity management."The impact of the crisis showed that even though liquidity management appears to be simple, yet the complex nature of the interrelationships among different markets in the financial system and certainty in the behaviour of financial markets makes the exercise rather complex. Moreover, liquidity management by central banks can have short and long-term implications, depending on the nature of operations," he said.

He then opined that from the cursory view of the course content, it is clear that the analytical skills of participants will be enhanced in the area of liquidity forecasting and modeling, among other things. Professor Akpan H. Ekpon, the director general of WAIFEM said the six-day interactive session is designed to upgrade the knowledge and analytical skills of participants in the area of liquidity forecasting, and will cover such thematic areas like monetary policy and liquidity management in central banks, modeling techniques, fiscal cash planning and management, country case study, forecasting government cash flows and forecasting foreign exchange flows, and interbank market liquidity. He briefed the participants about WAIFEM, a body which was established in July 1996 by the Central Banks of The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone with the mandate to build sustainable capacity for improved macroeconomic and financial sector management in member countries.

"Since the commencement of its operation over the years, WAIFEM has organised over 330 training and capacity building programmes in the form of national and regional courses, legislators, for a, demand assessment, institution building and follow-up missions, senior policy and inter-regional seminars," he disclosed. The WAIFEM boss further disclosed that the institution has also benefited over 1,2000 middle, senior and executive level officials, legislators and journalists predominantly from WAIFEM member countries as well as a sizeable number from other sub-regions in Africa and Latin America.

He further informed the gathering that in order to ensure a high standard in its programmes, WAIFEM had collaborated with a number of reputable institutions notably, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the World Bank and the African Development Bank (ADB) among others. "These collaborative technical partners find in WAIFEM an effective and efficient platform to reach many more in the sub-region, while the institute finds in them a source of cutting edge knowledge and skills to enrich its programmes," he noted.
Professor Ekpon stated that efficient liquidity management in the context of monetary policy implementation, is sine qua non for contemporary fiscal and monetary policy decision-making. According to him, this involves the management of the central bank's balance sheet through monetary operations so as to steer monetary and liquidity conditions towards the attainment of the target for inflation.

The WAIFEM boss then urged the participants to interact with the resource persons and fellow participants. Gibriel Asante, the programme manager, Macroeconomic Management Department of WAIFEM delivered the vote of thanks, while Dr Patricia Adamu, senior programme manager, in the same department, chaired the opening session.