The support came through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the implementation of a five-year technical assistance project to improve performance.

According to the project document, the major focus of the project include strengthening public sector capacity in financial management, human resource, assets and procurement management and improving capacity of the Liberia Institute of Public Administration to provide civil servant training.
The MoU also covered facilitating the implementation of government’s ICT policy, strengthening the government’s capacity to manage natural resource concessions and assisting in developing an operational modern national payment system through mobile money.

Speaking during a formal end-of-project handover of deliverables to the NBC, the Deputy Director General for Administration, Dickson T. Yarsiah, on behalf of the Director General and staff, thanked the management and staff of USAID-GEMS for the capacity, logistical and institutional support to the bureau and the government of Liberia.

The turnover ceremony took place on Monday, May 30, at the NBC Offices in Sinkor.

Recounting the long-term partnership with USAID-GEMS, Mr. Yarsiah said the project was initiated during the administration of the bureau’s late Director General, M. Tarnue Mawolo, and began with a needs assessment, where gaps and capacity needs were identified.

From this point, Yarsiah continued, UASID-GEMS immediately seconded two experts in mining, economic and financial analysis that worked closely with the NBC and drafted Liberia’s first National Concessions Reporting Template which has been validated, approved by the cabinet and launched, putting in place effective monitoring tools to capture concessions activities reports.

The NBC Deputy Director General noted that under the project, USAID-GEMS also conducted trainings and built capacity for NBC in financial management, human resource, assets, ICT, procurement, among others, which have equipped the staff in those areas that now have excellent outputs in their performance.

Yarsiah averred that the currently used Concession Information Management System (CIMS), which is an electronic data base information system that has a repository of all necessary available concessions information, Staff Term of Reference, Employees Hand Book, among others, were all initiatives championed by USAID-GEMS.

Yarsiah then appealed to USAID-GEMS to consider continuing the partnership.
LINA PR/RD/TSS/PTK