The Caribbean Experience with PFM Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Posted by Arnold Ainsley[1]

The IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) and the Caribbean Technical Assistance Center (CARTAC) recently organized a series of webinars for CARTAC member countries on public financial management (PFM) responses to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These seminars are a forum to promote peer-to-peer learning and for countries in the region to share their experiences. The first series of webinars discussed government cash management during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second series addressed preparing PFM systems for emergency response challenges during the COVID-19 Crisis.  Some lessons learned from country experiences to date are discussed below:

Lessons from the Cash Management webinar

There were some valuable lessons from participants, including the following:

Lessons from the webinar on PFM responses to the pandemic

The main takeaways from this event were the following:

The webinars highlighted that countries that had previously put in place PFM tools to deal with natural disasters were able to deploy them in response to COVID-19. The webinars also illustrated a strong interest in peer-to-peer exchange of experiences in the region.

This article is part of a series related to the COVID-19 Crisis. All of our articles covering the topic can be found on our PFM Blog COVID-19 Articles page.

 

[1] Arnold Ainsley is a PFM Advisor at CARTAC.

Note: The posts on the IMF PFM Blog should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy.

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