Skopje, 24 July 2020
As part of the activities for strengthening transparency and improving communication with the public, the National Bank has started a new practice - economic journalists workshops will be held a few times instead of once a year. Amid COVID-19 pandemic, the National Bank has already started organizing a series of e-workshops covering current topics and tackling issues relevant for accurate, complete and timely public information about the central banking operations in the country.
The first e-workshop of the series was held yesterday, and was dedicated to the statistics of other financial corporations - pension funds, insurance companies, investment funds, investment fund management companies and pension fund management companies, financial companies and financial leasing providers. This relatively recent central bank statistics provide timely and detailed data for monitoring and analyzing economic sector developments, by type of financial corporations. It also contributes to the decision making on monetary policy conduct, assessing financial system vulnerabilities and monitoring financial stability.
"In the period after the 2008 economic crisis, there has been an increasing trend in the other financial corporations. Double-digit growth rates have been registered, including in our economy. One of the reasons behind is the major regulatory reforms in finance in the period after the 2008 crisis. This trend is significant in many ways. On the one hand, it means a greater offer of financial products and new investment opportunities, but on the other hand it requires greater vigilance, above all to protect consumers from taking excessive risks, through financial education and establishing institutional mechanisms for their protection", said Governor Anita Angelovska Bezhoska in her address.
Although the National Bank is not a regulator of these institutions, it prepares these statistics in accordance with the international standards, which is especially important due to the growing role of the other financial corporations in the financial sector as well as in financial intermediation. Hence, for central banks, besides for conducting monetary policy, these statistics are particularly important for maintaining financial stability.
At the workshop, the Director of the National Bank Statistics Department, Sultanija Bojceva Terzijan, delivered a presentation on other financial corporation statistics elaborating data and trends in the other financial corporations sector since 2014, when these data became part of our central banking statistics as of the first quarter of this year. The discussion with the journalists covered several important issues.
The next series of e-workshops will cover new topics of public interest that has not been discussed so far in the events organized for journalists.