TRANSPARENCY OF CBA’S WORK FULLY IN LINE WITH 73 OUT OF 77 IMF STANDARDS

Noyan Tapan
April 7, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 7, NOYAN TAPAN. The transparency of the work of the
Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) is fully in line with 73 out of the 77
standards established by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). the
chairman of the CBA Tigran Sargsian stated on April 7 when presenting
the booklet "The Correspondence of Transparency of the CBA to the
World Standard".

In the words of Margarita Mamikonian, marcoeconomist of the external
economic relations unit of the CBA monetary and credit policy
department, transparency of the CBA’s work is partly in line with
the standard envisaging that "the public shall be informed about the
amounts and terms of credits, advance payments and overdrafts provided
to the government by the CBA, as well as about the government’s
deposits with the CBA". The partial discrepancy here is conditioned
by the RA Law on Bank Secrecy, according to which, only the customer,
in the given case – the Armenian government, may publish information
on deposits. M. Mamikonian said that another three standards are
not applicable by the CBA. Two of them are related to publication
of information about relations between the CBA as the supervisory
body and the Armenian Stock Exchange and the Central Depository of
Armenia as self-regulatory bodies. These bodies have been transformed
from self-regulatory into commercial organizations with status of an
open joint-stock company. Besides, the standard, by which "the public
shall be informed about legal protection of officials and employees
of a financial agency during the performance of work duties", is
not applicable either. It is not applicable for the reason that the
norms of legal protection of the indicated employees have not yet
been defined legislatively in Armenia.

According to T. Sargsian, since the early 1990s when the central
banks shifted to the inflation targeting policy, importance has been
attached to development of standards of transparency of the central
banks’ activities.

With the use of the inflation targeting policy, special importance
has been attached to development of those transparenct standards that
make the practice of the central banks understandable and predictable
to the public.

The CBA started the introduction of these standards in 1998.

The transparency standards of the CBA work cover the sectors of the
monetary and credit policy and the financial policy.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress