Subnational fiscal and debt management training held in Shanghai
On December 10, the subnational fiscal and debt management training, organized by AFDC in cooperation with the World Bank, was opened at Shanghai National Accounting Institute. 25 participants joined in the five-day training, consisting of debt management officials from the Ministries of Finance of Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Laos, Pakistan, Tajikistan, China and the World Bank staff from both its headquarters in Washington DC and the World Bank offices in Vietnam, India, Serbia and China.
The opening ceremony was chaired by Dr. Min Zhao of AFDC. Mr. Sudarshan Gooptu, Sector Manager of the Economic Policy and Debt Department of the World Bank and Dr. Runzhong Peng, Director of AFDC delivered short opening remarks respectively on behalf of the co-organizers of the training. “I hope you will have a productive week here and hopefully you will apply what you have learned here to your work in your own countries”, said Mr. Gooptu.
This four-module training course will focus on the financing side of the subnational fiscal system covering topics relating to: challenges and cutting-edge issues concerning the subnational taxation systems; fiscal risks from contingent liabilities; regulatory frameworks for subnational borrowing; and the framework for subnational debt and cash management.
Besides Mr. Gooptu, three other experts will also join in the faculty team to instruct the course, including Prof. William Fox, a famous tax expert from University of Tennessee, Ms. Lili Liu, Lead Economist in Public Sector and Institutional Reform, Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank, and Ms. Abha Prasad, Senior Debt Specialist in Economic Policy and Debt Department of the World Bank.
Participants will also be invited to share their country’s case during the training. Following the session on fiscal risks, a Vietnam case will be introduced, and following the session on taxation policy, Indian participants will share their fiscal responsibility rules with all the other trainees. Prof. Xingmin Yin from Fudan University is also invited to talk about the special features of local non-budgetary and debt management in China to give participants a better understanding of China’s practices in these fields.
Participants will also be divided into four break-out discussion groups. They will be assigned a case study material following the study of each module and required to dig deeper into each topic to solve the problems from four different perspectives designed in the case studies. They will then present their case study results under the facilitation of four experts. In this way, participants will be able to apply what they learn from experts to actual cases and find the training really rewarding.
This is the fourth time AFDC cooperated with the Economic Policy and Debt Department of the World Bank to organize a series of debt management training workshops in Shanghai since 2010. Given the importance of this topic, AFDC will continue to cooperate with the World Bank to organize such trainings on debt management in the future to build up the capacity for better fiscal and debt management both at national and subnational levels in the region.
