In recent years, the public debt management arena has undergone significant transformation and development including stronger emphasis on medium-term debt management strategy development, increasing awareness of risk management, growing importance of the management of contingent liabilities, new reporting standards and the need for improved transparency.
Given these changes in public debt management, as well as significant advancement in technology, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Debt Management Unit embarked on a project to develop a new public debt management system, Commonwealth Meridian, that incorporates advanced and improved functionalities to address emerging debt management requirements and takes advantage of the latest state-of-the-art technologies.
Commonwealth Meridian is a comprehensive solution that promotes effective and pro-active public debt management. It offers the following functions and features:
Meridian has undergone various forms of rigorous testing, including by the software development partner, the Secretariat’s debt management unit, user acceptance testing by 16 debt management experts from various countries and organisations across the Commonwealth, and through a pilot programme lasting one year with 10 participating countries.
The diagram below shows a main screen, listing the different modules that are available in Meridian.
Meridian will cater for both SQL and Oracle sites. However, the new system is web-based and may require hardware and system software that your organisation may not have. The specifications are available for review at the top of this page or by reading the Meridian technical requirements document.
The Secretariat will provide a Migration Tool to assist countries to move from CS-DRMS to Meridian. However, migration is conditional on countries upgrading to at least CS-DRMS Version 2.2.
Countries must ensure that the quality of CS-DRMS data is at the required level for migration to Meridian. Guidance notes on preparing for migration will be provided to assist countries.
Member countries will be required to sign a new license agreement for Commonwealth Meridian, which also has a new fee structure. A signed license agreement is a pre-requisite for the implementation of Commonwealth Meridian.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is pleased to announce that after a successful pilot programme, Meridian will be available from July 2019. Interested member countries should contact the Secretariat on the following email [email protected]
The Secretariat will continue to support CS-DRMS for a limited number of years after Meridian has been released. However, no new features will be introduced and only critical bugs will be fixed during this time. Existing users will be strongly encouraged to migrate to Meridian.
If you have any questions, you can contact us at [email protected]. More information on Meridian will be made available on this website shortly.