The 2021 High-Level Peer-to-Peer Workshop for Central Bankers from CCA, Moldova and Mongolia

The Sixth Annual Central Bank Practitioners’ Workshop—co-organized by the IMF, JVI, and Swiss National Bank (SNB)—was held virtually over June 22-24. This year’s workshop was organized around the theme of Beyond COVID—Normalization and Resilience in a Two-speed World, with participants and speakers from central banks across the Caucasus, Central Asia (CCA) as well as Belarus, Moldova, and Mongolia, and experts from the IMF, the SNB, the JVI, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), the Bank of Albania, Turkey, the National Bank of Ukraine, and the University of London. The keynote speaker was Professor Patrick Honohan (former Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland).


The sessions this year addressed issues around (i) the post-pandemic rebuilding of balance sheets; (ii) the coordination of monetary policy and foreign exchange interventions; (iii) the unwinding of emergency financial sector and monetary policy measures; and (iv) necessary post-pandemic supervisory and institutional changes. The sessions were well attended, high-quality, and covering granular and practical policy advice. As in past years, the discussions on the various topics benefitted considerably from frank exchanges of views and experiences of participants, most of them deputy governors and department managers. Despite the virtual format, which made engaging more complicated than usual, the workshop proved again an effective platform for policy discussions and peer-learning in the region. The workshop series is expected to continue next year, hopefully in person in Vienna.

Hervé Joly, Director, JVI