Kampala — IN its new effort in helping poor countries achieve sound financial system, the International Monetary Fund has announced that it will hold a high level financial seminar aimed at providing practical solutions for overcoming key obstacles that stymie financial sector development in Sub-Saharan African countries.

The seminar under the theme: High-Level Seminar on African Finance for the 21 Centaury, will take place in Tunis, Tunisia from March 4 to March 5.

The meeting comes at a time when many African governments are grappling with policies aimed at deepening financial sector in their countries so that people can have accesses to financial services, because a well developed financial sector plays a key role in economic growth for any one country because it enables people to mobilize and pool savings needed for investments.

"The financial sector facilitates market exchange, mobilises and pools savings, allocates capital efficiently and makes risk management possible," says IMF in its Financial Actives Programmes for 2008.

The IMF says the starting question of this high level seminar is: to what extent does the financial sector in Africa play these roles? And how can the efficiency of the financial institution be improved so that they can play a more active role in economic development?

Targeted participants include high-level officials from governments, including ministries of finance, economy, planning, and development; financial regulation and supervision agencies, and central banks.

The seminar will involve contributions by experts from official agencies in Africa, international financial institutions, the private sector, and academia, according to a statement issued on January 25.

IMF said despite achieving macroeconomic stability in recent years, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are still struggling to maintain a sustained economic growth path fostering economic development and poverty reduction.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has continued to grow for 20 years.

The Households survey conducted by Uganda National Bureau of Statistics between 2005 and 2006 indicates the level of poverty has dropped from 39 per cent to 31 per cent, which is still high by international standard.