The Commonwealth Secretariat has released a Service Pack (SP1) to the version 1.3 of CS-DRMS 2000+. This upgrade comes with fixes to certain issues identified with the software but also brings along a number of enhancements.

The features shipped as part of the service pack include the following:

• A 'Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS)' data bridge which allows clients to report data on their external debt as per the reporting requirements of the World Bank. The QEDS initiative developed jointly by the World Bank and the IMF aims at bringing together comparable external debt data to facilitate macroeconomic analysis and cross-country data comparison. The new QEDS facility in CS-DRMS is a useful tool for countries to seamlessly generate data files in the formats prescribed by the World Bank from their CS-DRMS database. These files can then be sent to the World Bank.
  
  
• A 'Medium Term Debt Strategy (MTDS)' data bridge which enables clients to generate debt data from their CS-DRMS database for input into the MTDS tool developed by the IMF. MTDS is an Excel based toolkit which provides a framework to assist countries in formulating a debt management strategy for the medium term. The tool uses a number of inputs including the government financing requirements and different macroeconomic scenarios besides the existing debt portfolio data on an instrument-wise basis which the CS-DRMS MTDS facility will provide.
  
  
• A set of new forward looking reports with special focus on securities as well as full debt portfolio review whichl allows debt managers to effectively manage their debt portfolio and make informed decisions.

The fixes for example include enhancements to the World Bank Bridge, Euro conversion facility, running reports across loans and securities, etc.

Further details on the fixes and enhancements and installation instructions are provided in the release notes which accompany the service pack.