The West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) Monday kicked-started a five-day regional training seminar on economic and financial analysis for journalists drawn from five West African countries, in Lagos, Nigeria.

The training is meant to update the knowledge and upgrade the skills of journalists and other media practitioners in economic and financial policy formulation, analysis, performance monitoring and reporting. It is expected to increase the economic quotient of attendees towards promoting a greater public awareness of domestic and international economic and financial issues in the interest of a more enlightened electorate that will engender greater popular participation in national economic and financial agenda.

During the course of the five-day training, participants are expected to cover various topics including the role of statistics in economic management; sources of financial and economic statistics; structure of financial markets instruments, interpretation of financial and economic indicators, money laundering and financial crimes; regional economic integration in West Africa; hands-on analysis and reporting on a budget speech, amongst a host of other pertinent issues.

Officially opening the seminar on behalf of the director general of WAIFEM, Ousman Sowe, director of Administration and Finance at the Institute, underscored the significant of the training, reiterating that it is organised in line with WAIFEM’s recognition of the importance and critical role that the mass media could play in economic and financial issues.
 
Single monetary zone
Commenting on the proposed single monetary zone, The Gambian-born top WAIFEM official told the journalists that in recent years, most West African countries have undertaken economic reforms aimed at improving macroeconomic management through financial sector and trade liberalisation. One of the recent initiatives towards regional integration, he said, was the establishment of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) in December, 2000.  “The WAMZ is expected to work towards the integration of the economies of the five participating countries within the context of ECOWAS agreement,” he stated, while stating that the commencement date for the WAMZ common currency has been postponed thrice; January 2003, July 2005, and December 2009.

This, he said was due to the inability of member countries to meet the required quantitative and qualitative criteria. While noting that the WAMZ project is on course to materialise in 2015, Sowe explained that intra-WAMZ trade can be promoted through the use of local currencies in intra-regional transactions. He stated that the informal sector in the region is already practicing the free convertibility of regional currencies in their cross-border activities with appreciable success.

He finally urged the participants to maximise their benefits from the course through active participation and sharing of experiences. It could be recalled that the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management was established in July 1996 by the Central Banks of The Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Its principal mandate is to build capacity for debt, financial sector, and macroeconomic management in the countries of the member central banks.

Since then, the Institute’s techniques and tools of intervention have diversified to include training courses, workshops, senior policy seminars, legislative fora, demand assessment, follow-up and institutional building missions, amongst others. Its outreach now extends beyond the traditional mandate zone of the central banks and ministries of finance and planning to cover other ministries, departments and agencies, legislatures, and mass media amongst others.