On 29–30 October 2020, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) held the online roundtable Strategic planning in Central Banks involving 15 central banks and regulators from: Belgium, Armenia, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Germany, Northern Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, Tunisia, Hungary, and Sweden.
The participants of the meeting presented their own strategies, internal organizational processes, key goals, and priority areas of work, as well as performance indicators and the results already attained.
The presented approaches to strategic planning had a lot in common. Thus, the central bank strategies are developed mainly for 3–5 years, and the function of strategic planning is closely related to project management and implementation of institutional changes.
In addition to traditional goals such as ensuring price and financial stability, most central banks include into their strategic priorities digitalization, development of educational projects, and consumer rights protection, as well as improvement of internal and external communications for quicker achievement of the goals set.
Actually, central banks place a special emphasis on the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the event participants, due to coronavirus the banks were forced to review substantially the portfolios of planned projects, including the terms of completion. The central bank activities aimed at development of green lending are worth a special mention. Most roundtable participants pointed out that they included environmental and climate change issues in their strategic plans.
Over the course of the roundtable, the strategic planning in the NBU and its key strategy documents also were presented. Strategic development at the NBU is also supported by international experience: the approaches of directive-based strategy formulation are applied less often now. Instead, leading central banks engage employees of all levels in strategy development.
"Strategic planning as a function the NBU assumed in 2014 in the midst of the economic crisis. Afterwards, we gradually developed our key documents: the NBU’s overall Strategy, Monetary Policy Strategy, and Foreign Exchange Intervention Strategy. These framework documents are important for implementation of the consistent NBU’s policy. It was the consistent economic policy that eventually enabled Ukraine to restore macrofinancial stability and move to the next stage of financial market development," said Oleksii Shaban, NBU Deputy Governor.
Nowadays the NBU already proceeds to the second strategic cycle - development of the NBU’s Strategy for the next period. In parallel to developing the NBU’s Strategy, we continue to implement the presented in January Strategy for Ukrainian Financial Sector Development until 2025. Also the NBU recently has presented the Strategy on Fintech Development in Ukraine Until 2025.
The implementation of the NBU’s Strategy promotes the general economic development of the country and considerable progress in financial sector development, in particular. Moderate inflation, lower loan interest rates, development of cashless economy, contactless payments in particular, BankID, a stable banking system (even in times of crisis) – these are the practical outcomes of the implementation of strategic plans.
The Roundtable on Strategic Planning in Central Banks has been held for the second time. The first event was organized by the NBU last year. 10 central banks took part in the first roundtable. The next event is planned for October 2021.