Skopje, 28 November 2013

Press release of the NBRM

The National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia Council held its thirteenth session, today. At its today's session, the Council adopted the Decision on reporting weighted average interest rates on loans and deposits so as to fully harmonize interest rate statistics with the ECB's regulation concerning statistics on interest rate (Regulation ECB/2009/7). Reporting on weighted average interest rate differs from the previous reporting, primarily in terms of the concept and scope of data concerning the overall accounting balances and newly agreed activities. The new requirements allow split of the package of data on weighted interest rates into several reporting units, allowing their separation by sector, maturity of financial instruments, purpose of loans to households, amount of loans, currency, type of collateral and type of financial instrument, thus providing, for the first time, collection of data on credit cards of nonfinancial institutions and revolving credits. Unlike the current method of reporting where only banks are reporting agents, with this decision, the reporting requirement also applies to savings houses.

At the session, the Council also adopted a new Decision on CB bills which introduces a methodology for determining the potential demand for CB bills. Actually, in the recent period, the auctions reported significantly higher demand for CB bills compared to the actually available liquid assets in banks, because of their intention to increase their share in the total amount of CB bills. As defined by the established mechanism, if the demand exceeds the potential at the level of the overall banking system, the banks bidding higher amounts of own liquidity potential will be required to place the difference above the potential in seven-day deposits. These news are expected to align supply of and demand for CB bills and to appropriately target excess liquidity towards the banking system in the Republic of Macedonia.

Novelties in the Decision on CB bills entails amendments to the Decision on deposits facilities that allow placing funds in seven-day deposits in conditions of higher than potential demand for CB bills.

At its today's session, the Council also adopted a Decision on amending the Decision on the reserve requirement. To further use available instruments and to encourage more active use of advantages provided by the macro-prudential measures, it was decided to release the National Bank from paying reserve requirement remuneration.

At the session, the Council also adopted the Decision on the terms and the manners under which residents may conclude credit operations in foreign currency and make payments based on those credit operations. The new Decision mainly arises from the need for technical compliance with the provisions of the Decision on credit risk management (Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia No. 50/13), which will take effect from 1 December 2013 and focuses primarily on the terms and manner of concluding foreign currency credit operations for international and domestic payments, which are important for proper implementation of the exchange regime prescribed by the Law on Foreign Exchange Operations and the Instructions for the manner of conducting international payment operations.

The Council also considered other matters within its jurisdiction.

Governor's Office