Konan Jacques ASSAHORE, Director General of the Treasury and Public Accounting of Côte d’Ivoire
“My vision is to make the Public Treasury a more efficient administration, capable of effectively accompanying the strong growth that has been underway for several years.”
His name rhymes directly with insurance in Niger. He is Mamadou Talata DOULLA, the promoter of SAHAM ASSURANCES, a company he launched in 2012, after having worked for decades for the promotion of the sector in the country. First at SNAR-LEYMA, then at UGAN, where he held several strategic positions. In this interview, he gives us an overview of the partnership relations between insurance and reinsurance companies and the Government Securities Market and the profits generated by investments through public securities which have become the rush of insurance companies in view of the profits regularly generated. He also highlighted new perspectives around boosting profitability.
Who is Konan Jacques ASSAHORE?
I am ASSAHORE Konan Jacques, married, father of six children. Holder of a master’s degree in public law obtained at the National University of Côte d’Ivoire in 1987, I joined the Public Treasury with a degree from the National School of Administration awarded in 1989. In the course of my professional career, I successively held the positions of Head of Department, Head of Studies of the Director General, Authorized Officer, Treasurer General, Accounting Officer of the Public Debt and Deputy Director General.
In the latter capacity, I have had to perform significant financial roles between 2011 and 2016. These included:
- steering strategic government projects such as the Single Treasury Account;
- participation in several negotiations with development partners;
- coordination, with the entire WAEMU banking system, of negotiations for the restructuring of outstanding treasury bills not honored as a result of the post-election crisis;
- coordination of resource mobilization activities in the capital market.
My career was crowned, on June 29, 2016, by my appointment as Director General of the Treasury and Public Accounting, following a call for applications. This appointment, I owe it mainly to my vision of making the Public Treasury “a more efficient Administration, capable of effectively supporting the strong growth initiated several years ago”. Thus, during a seminar held on 8 and 9 September 2016, I rallied all the human resources of the Public Treasury around this vision which was revealed, at the end of these meetings, in a multi-year planning document entitled Strategic Development Plan (SDP) 2016-2020 of the Public Treasury. Pursuing this dynamic, I had a new Strategic Development Plan adopted during a Management Review held in February 2021, covering the 2021-2025 period. Finally, driven by a strong impetus to contribute to local development, I entered politics, getting elected, on March 7, 2021, as Deputy of the localities of Diabo and Languibonou.
At the head of the Treasury and Public Accounting of Côte d’Ivoire, you have achieved performances, one of the most emblematic of which is the global certification obtained in November 2019, by the Institution, on all its trades, the ISO 9001 version 2015 standard. Concretely, what has this certification brought to the institution?
The overall certification of the Treasury is indeed one of the best performances recorded under my management. I would like to take the opportunity of this interview to reiterate my satisfaction and congratulations to all my colleagues who have understood the importance of teamwork throughout the process.
To return to the question, it is important to emphasize that obtaining the Certificate to the ISO 9001 version 2015 standard has had many positive effects not only for our administration, but also and above all for our users/clients and the State.
Thus, certification to the ISO standard has enabled the Public Treasury to build confidence of users/customers and partners, to improve operational quality, to consolidate the structural and sustainable transformation of our Administration, etc.
As far as our users/customers are concerned, they can now benefit from a better quality of reception, more rapid processing of their letters, complaints and claims, and an improved level of satisfaction.
As for the State, the ISO 9001 Certificate of the Public Treasury enhances the credibility it enjoys from national and international partners and improves the quality of its signature.
The stakes of such a performance, as you will have noted, go beyond the Treasury and justify our firm determination to work towards maintaining this Certificate which has brought us into the sphere of the most modern public administrations.
In any case, the overall certification of the Public Treasury to the ISO 9001 version 2015 standard confirms our ambition to be a reference for administrations at the national level and even beyond our borders.
This is evidenced by the various awards obtained during the last decade.
Can you tell us about a few innovations recorded in the framework of management and user/customer satisfaction, such as the Treasury Listening Centre and the Baobab digital platform?
The implementation of the Treasury’s Listening Centre and the Baobab digital platform is part of a vast project to digitalize our management procedures and methods, which has been underway since the 2016-2020 DSP and is reaffirmed in the 2021-2025 DSP. Through these reforms, we are pursuing the objective of bringing the administration closer to the citizen, in accordance with government guidelines.
Thus, the Listening Centre aims to bring together in one place all the main information that the user/customer may need. The Listening Centre is therefore intended to be a one-stop shop for information about the Treasury. It is a dynamic and interactive interface that aims to facilitate users’/customers’ access to the Treasury’s services, by listening carefully to their needs, requirements and expectations in order to satisfy them in the long term. As for the Baobab platform, it is an online customer relationship management system. It aims to enable all users/customers to interact with the Treasury services at any time and in any place from any digital medium (smartphone, tablet, computer, etc.).
In addition to these innovations, other digital tools also developed as part of our relationship with our stakeholders include:
- The Ebanktresor platform for customers of the Banque des Dépôts du Trésor Public ;
- The electronic platforms for payment of expenditure and collection of revenue, known as TRESORPAY and TRESORMONEY ;
- Prepaid cards designed for payment of foreign travel expenses, scholarships and premiums for international sports competitions;
- The platform for the electronic collection of chancery fees.
Through its Treasury, Côte d’Ivoire appears to be one of the main issuers on the WAMU Government Securities Market. How do you assume this leading position?
This leadership position was recently confirmed by the May 2021 UMOA-Titres news magazine. It is a positioning which is naturally assumed in connection with the strategy of raising Côte d’Ivoire’s resources on the financial markets. One of the components of this strategy is based on being active and regularly present on the Government Securities Market.
Can you give us an overview of Côte d’Ivoire’s issues in the first half of 2021 on the Government Securities Market in terms of performance?
I will start by indicating that the financing requirement on the financial markets for the year 2021 is XOF 2 010.5 billion. As at 30 June 2021, Côte d’Ivoire has been able to finance 84.06% of this need by resorting to the regional market for 55.66%. This is an opportunity to commend the dynamism of our investors on the local market and to thank them for the confidence placed in the public securities issued by Côte d’Ivoire.
In this year 2021, marked by economic recovery, your institution has resorted to Recovery Bonds. What do you think of these new instruments offered to the market by UMOA-Titres?
As part of its ongoing efforts to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and to stimulate the economy, BCEAO set up Recovery Bonds (RB) to help governments achieve their fund-raising objectives on the local debt market. These are innovative instruments that has enabled Côte d’Ivoire to raise large amounts of money with long maturities and at yields that are much lower than in previous years. As of June 30, 2021, 14 Recovery Bonds have been issued, with a completion rate of 129.85%.
What is your overall assessment of the support you receive from UMOA-Titres in managing your market debt?
UMOA-Titres is a major player in the management of the market debt of Côte d’Ivoire. It ensures the material organization of public securities issues by auction, advises and assists the State in the structuring of active debt management operations.
Overall, what is Côte d’Ivoire’s public securities issuance strategy for 2021? Do you intend to raise more resources than the previous year? Why?
For the year 2021, an amount of 2,010.5 billion is expected to be mobilized to finance the State budget, including 1,303 billion on the regional market.
As part of the Medium Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS), the 2021 government securities issuance strategy aims at optimizing the cost-maturity profile of new borrowings and is thus articulated around the following four (4) main objectives
- the rapid and efficient mobilization of resources needed for the 2021 budget execution ;
- Continued work to diversify the country’s investor base and sources of finance;
- Maintaining sufficient room for maneuver in relation to DSA rations in the medium term, in order to keep the risk of over-indebtedness at a moderate level;
- taking into account the levels of liquidity available for each class of instrument envisaged, in order to avoid any risk of cannibalization in the implementation of the mobilization plan.
How do you view the WAMU Government Securities Market, particularly in terms of diversification of its investor base and more specifically the role of institutional investors on this market?
The Government Securities Market is in constant demand by WAEMU Member States, particularly because of the effects of the global health crisis. It is a market that offers a diversity of maturities for all categories of investors. However, it must be noted that institutional banking investors hold almost all the public debt. The challenge would be to avoid the market becoming too dependent on a single category of investors. Hence, the need to broaden the investor base.
Your final word to your readers.
This is an opportunity for me to thank UMOA-Titres for its constant support for the development of the public debt securities market. The challenge for us, as mentioned earlier, is to broaden the investor base and, in this regard, discussions are underway with various local market players.
I would like to seize this opportunity to thank and encourage all investors in the regional financial market for their support in mobilizing the resources needed to finance States.
Finally, I would like to reassure investors about Côte d’Ivoire’s credit. The quality of Côte d’Ivoire’s credit fundamentals was recently praised by the rating agencies, with two rating upgrades by Fitch and Standard & Poor’s. Indeed, Côte d’Ivoire had, on July 06, 2021, an inaugural rating with Standard & Poor’s, BB- with stable outlook. On July 19, 2021, Fitch upgraded the rating of Côte d’Ivoire from B+ with positive outlook to BB- with stable outlook. Côte d’Ivoire is now firmly anchored in the “double B” category and is positioned among the best rated countries in Africa, alongside Botswana, Morocco, South Africa and Namibia.