Youth Festival 2021: Pocket – Financial Workshop The youth gets a clearer view on the national economic reform plan |10 August 2021

Minister Hassan, Governor Abel, SS Payet and PS Agathine answered questions from the young audience yesterday (Photo: Jude Morel)

Being the country’s future workforce and economy keepers, a group of youngsters yesterday attended a workshop where they learned more on the government’s ongoing economic reform plans with the support of the International Monetary Fund.

Held at the STC conference room, the workshop was part of activities for this year’s Youth Festival which is being celebrated under the theme ‘Aspiration’.

Minister for Finance, Economic Planning and Trade Naadir Hassan, along with his counterpart for Youth, Sports and Family Marie-Celine Zialor were among those in attendance at yesterday’s session which was conducted by secretary of state (SS) for the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Patrick Payet, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) Caroline Abel.

The workshop which was officially launched by the chief executive of the Seychelles National Youth Council (SNYC) Penny Belmont was an opportunity for the youths present to have a better knowledge and understanding of the approved 32-month extended arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for Seychelles for SDR 74 million (US $105.63 million).

In his presentation, SS Payet talked about the key objectives of the programme under the EFF agreement which is to support the government’s policy and reform efforts aimed at reinforcing the country’s recovery from the pandemic, preserve macroeconomic stability, and advancing the reform momentum to raise and sustain inclusive long-term growth.

He also talked about key policy actions which include fiscal consolidation (limitation of government spending, prioritisation of spending, fiscal discipline, and improving on revenue collection), reducing debt sustainability risks (debt management reforms, set amount of borrowing on an annual basis and liability management operations), economic transformation (structural reforms to foster a sustainable private sector led growth) and protecting the environment and the most vulnerable segment of the population.

In her presentation, Governor Abel talked about the Central Bank and the banking system’s support to the business community and the economy in general where she addressed issues such as reduction in the policy rate by 200 basis points in 2020 and maintaining an accommodative monetary policy stance, the private sector relief schemes to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and larger businesses, moratorium on loan repayments, loan repayment under relief scheme extended to a maximum of eight (8) years, structural shift in the interest rate corridor as of July 1, 2021 to align domestic interest rates with prevailing macroeconomic fundamentals, and ensuring orderly functioning of the foreign exchange market and intervene in case of excess volatility.

Governor Abel also talked about reforms at the CBS, including modernising the financial system and enhancing the regulatory and supervisory framework with the aim of deepening the financial sector, including to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth, while preserving financial stability, CBS’ response to deal with the risks emanating from Covid-19, commitment to ensure a stable and well-capitalised banking system that can support the recovery by effectively monitoring and supervising the health of the financial system, to ensure the supervisory framework is more risk-sensitive, objective, forward-looking and continuous, as well as the monitoring of the banking system to assess the impact of Covid-19 measures in order to boost financial sector resilience.

Minister Hassan along with principal secretary for economic planning Elizabeth Agathine later joined Governor Abel and SS Payet on a panel to answer questions and queries from the young audience.

Roland Duval