The Secretariat's pioneering system is part of drive to help the West African state recover from economic devastation caused by the civil war

When Liberia's civil war - fuelled by ethnic groups scrapping for control over diamond, timber, rubber and iron ore - finally ended, Africa's oldest republic was left in turmoil.

The 14-year conflict, during which a quarter of a million people were killed, left the country's infrastructure in tatters and its economy in chaos with a massive national debt.

The first polls in the aftermath of this war were judged to be free and fair by the international community and saw Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf become Africa's first female president.

As well as large-scale unemployment, and figuring out how to reintegrate former fighters and child soldiers into society, the country's debt crisis was high on the President's in-tray following her inauguration in January 2006.

Managing the debt crisis

One of the reforms introduced in post-conflict Liberia was the re-establishment of a Debt Management Unit, which sits in the finance ministry. It was originally set up in the early 1980s but petered away when the war intensified.

For the last year, this Unit has been under the leadership of Jonathan Geegbae, who has overseen the recent introduction of software which aims to help the country manage its debt.

Crowning jewel

"CS-DRMS is one of the jewels in the Commonwealth's crown - a world-leading and transforming product" - Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma.

This internationally renowned software - called the Commonwealth Secretariat Debt Recording and Management System, or CS-DRMS - was first developed in 1985 to help countries record and manage their external and domestic debt. Since then it has been consistently updated to meet rapidly evolving times.

"Before CS-DRMS was introduced we had no debt management software at all, and had to rely on lots of spreadsheets, which became increasingly burdensome and time consuming," explains Mr Geegbae. "Using this robust system is a huge advantage as we are now able to easily access data, which simply wasn't readily available before. It makes our debt analysis much easier and consequently we are in a much better position than we were six months ago."

The system is available in both English and French and has been used in 59 other countries to date, including 15 countries and territories outside the Commonwealth, notably Afghanistan and Kosovo.

"In the last two years, a lot of enhancements have been made to the CS-DRMS to make it analytically rich," explains Arindam Roy, Head of Debt Management at the Secretariat. "With a number of future developments in the pipeline, the system will continue to play a major role in helping countries manage their debt."

Qualifying as a HIPC

One of the reasons the Secretariat's debt software was introduced in Liberia is to help the West African country gain status as a Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC).

When countries achieve this recognition, they qualify for help under the international HIPC Initiative, which aims to help governments manage how to repay their existing debt or take on new debt through a mixture of sound policies, generous debt relief and new inflows of aid.

What is the HIPC Initiative?

The HIPC Initiative was started by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the International Financial Institutions in 1996. It provides debt relief and low-interest loans to reduce external debt repayments to sustainable levels. The scheme was initiated because many heavily indebted countries could not afford to repay their debts.

There are, however, certain conditions that must be met for a country to receive assistance under this initiative, one of which is demonstrating an ability to manage debt. These conditions give the international community confidence that the country is making every effort to achieve economic stability.

"Countries are generally happy to forgive debts if they know that HIPCs like Liberia are in a good position to manage their own debt," explains Richard Odoom from Crown Agents, the company which has distributed the Secretariat's software to Liberia and conducted training for officials in the Ministry of Finance's Debt Unit.

"CS-DRMS is a very useful tool and has put them on track on achieving this stable position," he said. "The training has gone extremely well over the last six months and we now remain on call as Liberia strives forward in strengthening its economy in the aftermath of the devastating conflict."