Advisory support to member countries is usually initiated with a diagnostic analysis either conducted remotely or through an in-country mission; resulting in defining and agreeing on the scope and implementation method of the support required.

The following are the key focus areas of advisory support provided:

• Formulation and implementation of MTDS

• Institutional reforms

• Legal framework

• Contingent liability management

• Domestic market development

• Debt bulletin

• Procedures manual

Capacity building is provided through various means, such as: e-learning, training workshops (In-country/Regional/Pan-Commonwealth), conferences or stakeholders meetings and placement of debt experts. Debt officials, on a selective basis, are also provided with opportunities for an attachment within DMU.

A key component of the debt management programme is the provision of the Commonwealth Secretariat Debt Management Solutions that consists of a suite of software products which is primarily used by governments to manage their sovereign debt (both external and domestic) portfolio.

• The Commonwealth Secretariat Debt Recording and Management System (CS-DRMS) is an integrated tool for recording, analysing and reporting public sector debt. The software adopts a holistic approach through the extensive coverage of various types and categories of debt liability and debt related financial instruments for sovereign as well as sub-national governments. It is designed to manage both conventional and complex financial products (loans and securities) offered by a wide range of creditors and capital markets.
  
  The software, supporting sound debt management practices, is a comprehensive debt data repository system and helps maintain the debt position of a borrower. It supports crucial debt operations like debt service payments, monitoring of new borrowings and a host of analytical functions. The software promotes greater efficiency in debt management operations. It manages any portfolio size: small, medium or large; and its modular design means that it can be installed and configured to function independently or across back, middle and front offices.
  
  The current version of CS-DRMS has been in existence for more than ten years and is used in more than 60 countries representing both Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries. The development of a modernised and enhanced public debt management system to replace CS-DRMS is underway.
• The Securities Auction System (CS-SAS) allows countries to manage the auctioning of all government securities (Treasury Bills, Fixed Coupon Bonds and Floating Rate Bonds) through price-based or yield-based auctions. Users can conduct their auctions and optionally upload details of successful bids directly into CS-DRMS.
• Horizon is an innovative decision support system for countries seeking to undertake prudent sovereign debt management. It integrates the formulation and implementation of a debt management strategy within a risk management framework and supports governments to undertake debt operations to meet core debt management objectives.

Introducing Commonwealth Meridian

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.

About Commonwealth Meridian

Commonwealth Meridian is a comprehensive solution that promotes effective and pro-active public debt management. It offers the following functions and features:

• Public and publicly guaranteed debt, lending portfolios and private sector external debt can be recorded, managed and analysed;
• Customisable deployment of the solution in centralised, de-centralised and hybrid environments defined by member countries’ IT and institutional infrastructure;
• Configurable around the delivery to key stakeholders, e.g. Ministry of Finance, Debt Management Office, Central Bank, various funding agencies and project implementing agencies, thus streamlining the information flow between the various entities;
• The ability to model any workflow arrangement and/or institutional structure for debt management;
• Provides flexibility in adding and maintaining a wide range of financing products including any future financing products through the use of instrument templates;
• Organised around a central repository of data from which key stakeholders can access information to ensure that real time data is always available even to remote offices;
• Driven by alerts and notifications, integrated with mail exchange systems to support the business workflow process;
• Fosters accountability and transparency through data driven work flow; and
• Integrates with external systems to provide straight-through processing and accurate data to stakeholders.

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.

What is new in Commonwealth 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.

Continued support for CS-DRMS

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.

Resources

• Introducing Commonwealth Meridian
• Meridian technical requirements
• Meridian Q&As
• Using Commonwealth Meridian to Record and Manage the Debt Moratorium Initiative offered by G20 and Other Official Creditors

Commonwealth Countries

Interested Commonwealth member countries should contact the Secretariat.

Non-Commonwealth Countries

Contact Development Finance International (DFI) our official distributor by E-mail.

CS-DRMS has grown over the years to achieve the leadership status in the area of sovereign debt information management solutions. As a result of its popularity, the number of countries using CS-DRMS (available in both English and French) has risen shapely on annual basis since its first installation.

CS-DRMS, an integrated tool for recording, analysing and reporting public sector debt, is constantly evolving to match the ways in which debt management is reshaping itself. The software adopts a holistic approach through the extensive coverage of various types and categories of debt liability and debt related financial instruments for sovereign as well as sub-national governments.

CS-DRMS is designed to manage both conventional and complex financial agreements (loans and securities) offered by a wide range of creditors and capital markets. The software, supporting sound debt management practices, is a comprehensive debt data repository system and helps maintain an updated debt position for a borrower. It supports crucial debt operations like debt service payments, monitoring of new borrowings and a host of analytical functions. The software promotes greater efficiency in debt management operations.

CS-DRMS provides the users with a facility to capture loan instrument transactions at each stage of the loan cycle, thereby giving users:

• Comprehensive external debt recording module for private and public debt;
• Enhanced domestic debt module to record and maintain a diversified range of domestic debt instruments;
• An on-lending capabilities to assist governments in their lending and managing on-lending loans to public corporations and private sector;
• A debt analytical package called Management Tools;
• Short-term debt module to capture various types of short-term debt including contingent liabilities and other short-term domestic debt and arrears;
• An integrated debt-reporting facility flexible enough to satisfy a variety of users of debt information including compilers of balance of payment and government finance statistics;
• Flexible links to other systems to allow export and import of debt data.

CS-DRMS integrates with financial systems and allows seamless exchange of debt related data for improving efficiency and accuracy of information. It manages any portfolio size: small, medium or large; and its modular design means that it can be installed and configured to function independently or across back, middle and front offices.

Frequently asked questions related to CS-DRMS

To facilitate effective debt management capacity building, whilst providing efficiencies and effectiveness of training delivery, DMU developed a programme of eLearning courses aimed at providing debt managers with the tools and capabilities to successfully manage the public debt portfolio.

More information