Joseph R. (Jem) Armovit

Jem has been involved in public sector reform in the Philippines for the past 2 decades in various capacities as a government official, a consultant and staff for institutions including the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the World Bank and USAID. In his roles, he helped introduce reforms in tax policy and tax administration including the design…

Zoltan Milic

Zoltan Milic is an experienced economist with over 17 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation, data and complex systems modeling and analyses, change management, and internal auditing. Zoltan is currently the director of Monitoring and Evaluation, for Chemonics’ US Government Business Line. In his prior role, he served as the monitoring and impact evaluation…

Spurring Inclusive Growth in the Philippines

In the Philippines, economic progress is constrained by weak competitiveness and non-inclusive growth. However, recent high-level economic reform directives, like the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program and the “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program, present opportunities to transform the country’s economic trajectory. The USAID Delivering Effective Government for Competitiveness and Inclusive Growth (DELIVER) project promotes economic competitiveness…

Final Report: Integrated Financial Management System

Because of IFMS support, Haitian government agencies had real-time access to expenditure data through the improved IFMS network. Entities can send and receive key data faster and make more informed planning decisions. IFMS installed the UXP, a technology developed in Estonia that enables peer-to-peer data exchange over encrypted and mutually authenticated channels. IFMS contributed to…

The Journey to Better Development: Financial Sector Tools Worth Revisiting

If we’re going to make development dollars go further, we need to build on and learn from our experiences as implementors. Recognizing this, we revisited several frequently requested economic growth resources produced by Chemonics, our partners, and USAID through the USAID Financial Sector Knowledge Sharing Project (FS Share), which closed in 2012. While reviewing the…

Executive Memorandum: Armenia Financial Sector Assessment

Through the Financial Sector Knowledge Sharing Project (FS Share), USAID, in collaboration with its Bureau for Economic Growth Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) and Chemonics International, identified financial sector priorities and developed strategies and programs for growing the financial sector. FS Share also identified financial sector best practices and aggregated those best practices through model scopes…

FS Series #12: Developing Government Bond Markets – Primer, Diagnostic

The objective of this deliverable is to help United States government economic growth program designers identify reforms to facilitate the development of efficient government securities markets (GSMs), for the primary market in which government securities (GS) are issued and for the secondary market in which GS are traded. It presents case studies based on recent…

FS Series #11: Innovations in Financial Services Delivery – Branchless Banking

This primer’s objective is to provide U.S. government program designers with a basic technical understanding of branchless banking as a sustainable approach to increase access to financial services. The primer is designed as a practical tool to enable program designers to integrate best practices and lessons learned into effective economic growth programming.

Developing Azerbaijan’s Capital Market: An Assessment

While considerable progress has been made in establishing a legal and regulatory environment and the institutional infrastructure to support development of a securities market in Azerbaijan, the market remains underdeveloped and slowly developing. Notable constraints to market development include those associated with the market’s organizational and operational infrastructure, corporate governance, the protection of investors’ rights,…

Guidelines for a Rapid Financial Soundness Assessment

Through the Financial Sector Knowledge Sharing Project (FS Share) Task Order, the USAID Bureau for Economic Growth Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) and Chemonics proactively collaborate with missions to identify financial sector priorities and develop strategies and programs to grow the financial sector. FS Share identifies financial sector best practices and aggregates them through model scopes…

Conducting Capital Markets Assessments in Developing Countries

The United States Agency for International Development Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade (EGAT) developed the Capital Markets Assessment Tool (AT), which was derived from the Capital Markets Questionnaire for Equity and Corporate Debt Securities developed by Robert Strahota with support from USAID EGAT. The objective of the AT is to support assessment of…