In accordance with the transformation plan, the National Bank of Ukraine is reforming the way in which statistics are collected, processed, and disseminated.

“This fully meets the requirements set out in Section A7 “Transparent activities and Reporting” of the Comprehensive Program for the Development of Ukraine’s Financial Sector until 2020. For these requirements to be met, it is necessary to pool efforts with other regulators to ensure that reporting is collected in a concerted manner.  In this way, we will definitely be able to enhance significantly the transparency of the activities of financial market participants, which would be beneficial to both financial services consumers and regulators,” said Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Vladyslav Rashkovan.

Ukraine’s central bank is involved in robust efforts to deploy state-of-the-art data collection and processing techniques.

“Special emphasis is placed on improving data quality and making data user-friendly when it comes to using them for analytical purposes. To this end, as a matter of priority, we centralize the collection, quality control and dissemination of statistics at the Statistics and Reporting of the National Bank. So far, quality control of approximately 90% of statistical report forms, which in most cases was exercised at the NBU regional offices, has been centralized and formalized. By the end of 2015, we intend to standardize and centralize report forms that were submitted by the NBU regional offices to the regional state administrations and statistical authorities,” said Director of the Statistics and Reporting Department of the National Bank Yurii Polovniov.

The National Bank is also set to reduce reporting burden for banks in a gradual manner.

“One of the priorities of the reform aimed at reshaping the statistical function is to simplify statistical reporting and reduce reporting burden for banks. However, this process hinges on many factors, including how stable the situation in the country is: the list of reports to be produced during a short period of relative stability is different from the list of reports that are required during the period of protracted stability,” stressed Deputy Governor of the National Bank Vladyslav Rashkovan. We have also embarked on shifting from reporting on paper to reporting electronically”.

In addition, the National Bank consolidates and standardizes the methodology for compiling statistical reporting, which would enable us to avoid duplication and improve data quality.

“The process of reforming the way statistics are delivered to external users has entered an interim phase: the statistical database available on the website is being gradually adjusted to be used as a tool for analytical purposes.  Our final goal is to build an interactive statistical database and make it available on the website of the National Bank,” said Director of the Statistics and Reporting Department of the National Bank Yurii Polovniov. Simultaneously, we are transforming internal reporting: a unified portal for major reports has already been created and efforts are underway to fill it with content. The deployment of data visualization tools will enable us to streamline the search process and analysis of the input data for the decision-making process.

The Competencies Centre has been set up by the National Bank to train staff in using start-of-the-art technologies.

“Staff training is underway to teach the skills of using up-to-date statistical information handling techniques and ensure that employees are prepared for the adoption of the European Common Reporting (COREP) and Financial Reporting (FINREP) standards. To this end, external technical assistance is deployed by the National Bank of Ukraine,” explained Yurii Polovniov.

The transformation of the NBU reporting framework is expected to be completed in 2016.