MONROVIA – June 25, 2019:The Executive Governor of the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), Hon. Nathaniel R. Patray, III, has disclosed that Liberia’s financial sector will benefit from a more robust, resilient, secure, accessible and available medium through which data and financial transactions will be processed to meet requirements for interoperability and connectivity within the financial sector ecosystem. The CBL Executive Governor was speaking Monday, June 25, 2019, during the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of the Financial Sector Super Data Highway (FISSDaH).
The new FISSDaH Project replaces the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) that has been in use since 2015, as part of the African Development Bank-funded modernization of Liberia’s Payment System. The MAN technology made use of point-to-point radio links via antennas constructed atop CBL buildings and those of commercial banks throughout Liberia. The original capacity of MAN was limited to 2 megabytes and subsequently augmented to 6 megabytes but FISSDaH, its replacement, has a capacity of one gigabyte, far superior than the MAN it now replaces. Another major weakness of the MAN technology is that it is highly susceptible to the vagaries of the weather. FISSDaH is made of a fiber ring that lies beneath the City of Monrovia and its environs. It adapts to all protocols and solutions and processes transactions at high speed. With FISSDaH, the perennial problem of systems disconnected is expected to be a thing of the past. Better still, FISSDaH will save the CBL an annual bill of over US$300,000.00 (Three Hundred Thousand United States Dollars).
Stakeholders that signed the Memorandum of Understanding at the CBL Board Room were drawn from across the financial ecosystem, including commercial banks, non-bank financial institutions, the Liberia Revenue Authority, the Ministry of Finance, commercial telecommunications and mobile money operators and the Liberia Telecommunications Corporation, the implementing partner of the CBL.
The MoU commits the CBL to serve as a liaison between the participants, and to ensure that LIBTELCO provides the required services.
Participants welcomed the technological breakthrough and praised CBL Executive Governor Nathaniel Patray for overseeing the modernization of Liberia’s financial sector.