Kingdom of Lesotho

In response to a request from the authorities and as part of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) Enhanced Data Dissemination Initiative (EDDI) 2 project, a Government Finance Statistics (GFS) mission visited Maseru, Lesotho, during April 30–May 11, 2018. The mission was a follow up to two previous GFS Technical Assistance (TA) missions under the EDDI2 in March and November 2016 and in response to a request from the Lesotho delegation during a meeting with the Statistics Department (STA) at the 2018 Spring Meetings for GFS training. The mission’s main objectives were to: (i) provide training to GFS compilers on the Government Finance Statistics Manual (GFSM) 2014; (ii) review progress against recommendations from previous GFS TA missions; (iii) review the consistency of above-below-the-line fiscal statistics, and integration of flows and stocks of currently compiled GFS; (iv) identify source data, assess magnitude, and review mechanism for recording guaranteed debt and payment arrears; and (v) review current compilation of debt statistics and assist on improving compilation for reporting data to the World Bank-IMF Public Sector Debt Statistics (PSDS) database.