August 8, STEP’s PMU has conducted its monthly meeting. The meeting was chaired by the two Co-Directors of the Project, Mr. Nguyen Thac Tam and Mr. Rudi Schuetz, and involved personnel from DID and Co-opBank team.
During the meeting, the PMU received a briefing on the current progress of the project’s three main components (Risk management, Products & Services, IT) as well as Gender Equality and Environmental strategies, and has agreed on the upcoming project activities.
In particular, the IT component started discussions on the current CBS tender, its progress, and how to involve SBV in the overall process. Rudi Schuetz, STEP-DID Field Director, explained briefly the tender procedures and will circulate a procurement guideline for further information. He ensured that the SBV-IT Center will be certainly kept in the loop but it seems that SBV needs further meetings and discussions to clarify and agree on STEP’s role and tasks. As mentioned several times, STEP is not an IT project and it has neither the financial nor technical means to establish a CBS for the entire PCF network; this is solely the responsibility of SBV: STEP’s role with its IT component will provide a functional pilot CBS that can be later adapted by SBV.
We will keep the schedule of monthly PMU meetings. The team is speeding up to achieve the best results of the implementation phase by year end.