The Bank
of Somaliland and the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia have signed
a letter of credit agreement, reported Jamhuriya, an independent
Hargeisa-based newspaper.
According
to the report, the Letter of Credit, signed 30 May, covers
the import and export of goods and facilitation of commercial
transactions abroad.
Credit
and banking facilities for the Somaliland business community
previously required arrangements made in neighbouring countries
and the Arab states.
The deal
is the first since Somaliland's declaration of independence
in 1991. The United Nations Development Program-Somalia, through
its Capacity Building Facility program, provided the technical
support to the bank of Somaliland to facilitate the agreement.
Somaliland
officials have also recently held talks with the IMF and World
Bank in Nairobi.
In a
purely fact-finding mission, officials from the IMF and World
Bank held talks with representatives from Somalia for the
first time in ten years, reported AP.
"It seems
the security situation in some areas is improving, and there
is generally more economic activity", Milan Zavadjil, division
chief of the IMF's Middle Eastern department told AP.
He said
the IMF felt the fund should "discuss economic development
and the situation in all of Somalia".
A regional
analyst told IRIN that international bodies, like the World
Bank and IMF, would be increasingly pushed to use "creative
approaches" in areas like the Horn of Africa where authority
and economic growth may not necessarily lie with recognised
governments and institutions.
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