Today, the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia has held its VII session at which it discussed about and adopted several decisions in the area of monetary and foreign exchange policies

Skopje, 9 September 2004

Press release of the NBRM

Today, the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia has held its VII session at which it discussed about and adopted several decisions in the area of monetary and foreign exchange policies.

The National Bank Council adopted a Policy of managing and handling the foreign reserves of the Republic of Macedonia. The purpose of this paper is to increase the security and the efficiency in the management of the foreign reserves of the Republic of Macedonia. Fundamental principles underlying this Policy are the accomplishment of the tasks of the monetary policy and the Denar exchange rate policy and regular repayment of the external liabilities of the Republic of Macedonia. The principles of security and liquidity, as well as the principle of profitability will be strictly observed in the implementation of this Policy, without jeopardizing the two aforementioned principles. With this Policy, the National Bank Council requires from the Governor of the National Bank to adopt more precise rules for intervening on the foreign exchange market and rules for placing and holding the foreign reserves, in line with the set principles and criteria for meeting the security, liquidity and profitability principles. 

The Council adopted a decision on establishing a Credit Registry with the National Bank and specifying the contents and the manner of its operation. The Decision implements some of the latest amendments to the Law on the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia which require from the National Bank to organize and maintain a registry of all credits extended by the commercial banks to legal entities and natural persons. It specifies the types of information that are to be included in the Credit Registry and determines the rights and liabilities of the National Bank, the commercial banks and the savings houses with respect of the manner of submitting, processing and exploiting the information from the Credit Registry. The Credit Registry is an instrument that supplies the commercial banks and savings houses with data on the overall credit indebtedness and the average risk classification of the legal entities. The information from the Credit registry will help the banks and the savings houses assess the risk when they enter into credit and other business relations with certain legal entities, which will, in turn, contribute towards increasing the security of each bank and savings house and more stable banking system as a whole. The manner of operating the Credit Registry will be further improved.

The Council adopted a Decision on amending the Decision on the banks' Denar reserve requirement. The amendments require fixing of the amount of cash in the vault  which participates in the fulfillment of the reserve requirement, decreasing the requirement percentage which could be fulfilled by the cash in the vault from 60% to 30%, as well as reduction of the amount on which the remuneration of the reserve requirement is calculated by the fixed amount of cash in the vault included in the fulfillment of the reserve requirement. The adopted amendments are aimed at further improvement of the liquidity management by the banks and the National Bank.

The National Bank Council adopted a Decision on amending the Decision on the conditions and the manner of obtaining license and performing exchange offices operations and the Decision on amending the Decision on the manner of keeping records for each prompt money transfer transaction, which apply the new Anti-Money Laundering Law. The amendments to the above two decisions sets forth the manner in which the exchange offices and the prompt money transfer service providers identify the customers and the contents and the manner of maintaining the special Registry for transactions of amounts exceeding Euro 2,500.00.

 Governor's Office