In Focus: Developing Capacities in Central Banking for Long-term Results

National central banks have a regulatory and developmental role in ensuring stability of a country's economy. The recent financial crisis has reiterated central banks’ role and at the same time put new challenges upon them. Having knowledgeable and skillful staff that is able to adapt and act effectively in current vulnerable times is crucial to respond to these challenges. Through our learning program we aim to provide central banks and their employees relevant training events to best respond to their capacity development needs.

We have been working with numerous partners to provide training for central banks in our member countries. Our major partners in the central bank training program are the Bank of Slovenia, Dutch Central Bank, National Bank of Belgium, Central Bank of Montenegro, The European Central Bank, Bank for International Settlements, Austrian Central Bank, and The Central Bank of Hungary. Partners’ strong commitment and expertise enables us to offer relevant learning events on the most pressing central banking issues in South East Europe.

In the past we were one of the implementing partners within the European Central Bank (ECB) project “Strengthening macro and micro-prudential supervision in EU candidates and potential candidates”, financed by the European Union. The overall objective of the project was strengthening banking and financial supervision in these countries, including tighter cooperation with European Union authorities. Central banks in the region have already expressed their interest in continuing such initiatives in the future.

As part of our cooperation with the ECB, the CEF director Mira Dobovišek has been invited to speak at the high-level conference “International central bank cooperation before, during and after the crisis”. Marking ten years of ECB-coordinated technical cooperation programs, the conference took place in Frankfurt on December 3-4, 2013.

Together with other panelists from the Austrian Central Bank, the Central Bank of Egypt, Deutsche Bundesbank and the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies, Ms. Dobovišek participated in the discussion “Technical central bank cooperation – lessons from the last 25 years and the way forward”. The panel addressed issues of institutional capacity development through the alignment of rules and standards with international sound practices, the role of governance and project management in steering such changes, as well as previous experience of cooperation programs and areas of cooperation that may be in high demand in the future.

In recent years the CEF’s learning events have focused on new developments in retail and wholesale payments, the role of auditors in central banks, financial stability, supervision, and interaction between fiscal, monetary, and supervision policy. We have been offering practical, participatory and experience-based workshops. Learning from each other remains a priority for the CEF and we wish to continue fruitful cooperation with our partners in the future as well. Our central banking program for 2014 can be found here.