The annual Steering Committee Meeting for the Canada-IMF Technical Assistance Project «NBU Institutional Capacity Building» took place at the National Bank of Ukraine on October 29, 2015 featuring the NBU management headed by the Deputy Governor Vladyslav Rashkovan, the Project management team from the IMF HQ, Mr. Stephen Swaray and Mrs. Brenda Sylvester, and the local Project team headed by Mr. Marko Skreb, IMF Resident Representative Jerome Vacher and officials from Canadian Embassy in Ukraine, Messrs.Karim Morcos and Zheng Zhang.
The main topics discussed during the meeting included an overview of the Project activities and progress achieved during the last year, and arriving at a consensus as regards to the activities, areas and priorities for technical assistance within the Project for the future period.
The Deputy Governor Rashkovan emphasized the importance and effectiveness of support provided by the Project to the transformation and reorganization processes led by the NBU, as well as to fulfillment of the NBU commitments under the EFF Program with IMF. He underlined that recommendations provided to the NBU in the area of transformation, strategic planning, monetary policy and banking supervision, as well as high professionalism of the Project’s experts made it one of the most successful ever realized at the NBU.
Stephen Swaray outlined the main Project’s activities over the last year. He mentioned that in the future the Project would continue to focus on its main activity areas assisting to further building the NBU capacity, helping operational transformation in monetary policy, banking supervision and other areas, and would be extended to provide more technical assistance to the National Securities and Stock Market Commission since the proper development of all financial markets (capital, insurance etc.) would be a necessary prerequisite for a stable functioning and sustainable growth of Ukraine’s banking system.
Karim Morcos, Head of Development Cooperation from the Embassy of Canada, noted that Canada continued to consider Ukraine to be a very important partner and has been providing a significant support, particularly through investing into the Ukrainian economy. He also noted the successfulness of the Project and satisfaction with its results.
All the parties emphasized the importance of efficient donor coordination, a mandate assigned to Marko Skreb, a new Project Manager, successor to Wim Fonteyne, who has been managing the Project for the last four years.
Background Information about the Project
The TA Project, funded by the Canadian Government and administered by the IMF, was launched in 2009. The planned duration of the Project is through the end of April, 2017 (with possibility of extension).
The strategic objective of TA program is to provide help in restoring macroeconomic stability and lay the foundation for robust and balanced economic growth in Ukraine. Particularly, the program aims to strengthen monetary policy formulation and implementation, foreign exchange operations, crisis management and bank restructuring, bank regulation and supervision, IFRS accounting, financial stability and NBU modernization and strategic planning.