On 15–16 November 2023, the National Bank of Ukraine held the international roundtable on strategic planning for the fifth time. This year, the topic of the event was “Strategic Planning of the Financial Sector and Identifying Stability Areas within the Unstable External Environment.”
The participants presented their own strategies, internal transformation processes, key goals, and priority areas of work. The presented approaches to strategic planning had a lot of common features, the main of which were flexibility, readiness for changes, and being oriented toward systemic and innovative development.
In his opening speech, NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyy emphasized that for central banks strategic planning is a way to counter the uncertainty generated by exogenous factors – primarily by the war russia has been waging against Ukraine. Indeed, the war has not only affected the state of the economy of Ukraine, but also hampered global economic development.
“In the past year, teams of the NBU, the Ministry of Finance, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, and all Ukrainian regulators united around the goal to update strategy documents. The war that has been dragging for more than 600 days requires us to clearly understand the context, and strategic planning in this area can provide answers to difficult questions. For us the planning process is the deep interaction that allows the NBU and other regulators find optimal solutions and operate effectively – and sometimes even exceed expectations,” said NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyy.
He added that Ukraine’s accession to the European Union remains one of the country’s main strategic tasks. In this context, the NBU in its turn puts maximum efforts to foster European integration of the financial system.
At the round table, Arsen Makarchuk, director of the Strategy and Development Department at the NBU, spoke about the central bank’s updated strategy prepared in 2023 to replace the pre-war strategy, which was planned to be implemented until 2025.
Overall, the new Strategy of the National Bank of Ukraine laid the groundwork for attaining five key targets:
- Sustainable hryvnia
- Financial resilience
- Financial system operating for the country's recovery
- Modern financial services
- Effective central bank.
“The full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine is having a significant impact on the state of the financial system and is creating new challenges, to which we must promptly respond and ensure sustainability in the long run. Therefore, the goals set in the Strategy are aimed not only at responding to new challenges quickly and minimizing main consequences of the war, but also at laying the foundation for post-war recovery and economic development of Ukraine already now. So all the measures to meet the strategic goals are being implemented simultaneously, as we must plan both the stabilization and the steps that need to be taken now but will produce most of their effect after the war ends,” explained Arsen Makarchuk.
Other participants of the annual international roundtable also shared their vision of strategic changes. Most of them build their strategies taking into account global trends that influence economic development among other things.
For example, digital transformation became one of strategic development directions for many central banks and financial regulators, as it enables them to remain competitive and react promptly in the fast-changing digital landscape, where technologies dictate the market dynamics.
In general, strategic planning is now a focal point for all central banks and financial regulators. At the same time, strategic planning approaches cover many different areas that take account of external context, global challenges, and effective operation amid uncertainty.
Representatives of more than 30 central banks and financial institutions took part in the online event, in particular from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Austria, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Peru, Tunisia, and Canada. In addition, the event was attended by representatives of the European Central Bank, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and such Ukrainian public sector authorities as the Presidential Office, the Deposit Guarantee Fund, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
The National Bank of Ukraine established the tradition of holding the international roundtable on strategic planning in 2019, when it held the first event. Since then, representatives of dozens of central banks and financial institutions from many countries have gathered annually at the international roundtable.
Last year, due to russia's full-scale war against Ukraine and its impact on other countries, strategic planning and challenges for regulators in the new geopolitical environment became the key topic of discussion.