Business news

MINSK, 6 February (BelTA) – The National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB) has published a roadmap of the main objectives and strategic initiatives for 2018, BelTA learned from the website of the bank.

“The National Bank makes plans for its operations in line with the main objectives set in the Banking Code and the NBRB Statute. The planning system includes setting the main objectives for the current year to enable favorable conditions for sustainable inclusive economic growth through the quantitative and qualitative development of the monetary sector, banking, and payment system,” the post on the website reads.

The bank prioritizes and structures its main objectives. The first-level objectives are outlined in accordance with Belarus’ topical economic development issues. These objectives are comprehensive and are meant to reflect the NBRB’s priorities for 2018. The correlation of the first-level objectives with the NBRB’s goals is based on the main focus of the effects to be achieved. The first-level objectives are to: maintain the inflation rate measured by the consumer price index below 6%; increase the transparency of the National Bank and build up trust in its policy; ensure the resistance to external factors; liberalize the foreign exchange market and de-dollarize the economy; enable a safe reliable operation of the banking sector; ensure financial stability; develop Belarus’ payment system.

“The second-level objectives are formulated by decomposing the first-level ones. They reflect the approaches to accomplishing the latter. As a rule, a first-level objective corresponds to several lower-level ones. When setting every second-level objective, the NBRB works out the performance targets to be monitored and assigns a task to its subdivisions. This helps coordinate the operation of every NBRB’s unit and harmonize strategic and short-time planning in the central bank,” the NBRB noted.

The achievement of targets referring to the second-level objectives, in turn, influences the key performance indicators of the top executives and other employees of the NBRB’s subdivisions. This forms a system of responsibility for the implementation of plans the NBRB adopts.

The second-level objectives are to: maintain positive interest rates in real terms; optimize directed lending; regulate the liquidity of banks to meet operational targets; reduce the NBRB’s debt burden; remove foreign exchange restrictions; transfer from the regulatory to notification system in foreign exchange control; improve risk assessment methods; increase the transparency of the ownership structure of banks and non-banking financial institutions; develop investment banking; apply macroprudential tools; mitigate the threat of cyber crimes in finances, and some other objectives.

The NBRB adopted a roadmap for 2018 as a working document to represent the hierarchy of its objectives and goals.

Along with the ongoing operation of the NBRB’s subdivisions, the bank’s main goals can be achieved through the implementation of strategic initiatives.

“A strategic initiative is viewed as a set of programs, projects, and measures aimed at reaching the NBRB’s main goals at a higher organizational and technical level. Strategic initiatives have some distinctive features: novelty, mid-term or long-term perspective, large scale, and organizational complexity. The implementation of such initiatives requires cooperation between the NBRB’s subdivisions and third-party organizations,” the National Bank remarked.

The NBRB also applies project management tools and techniques on a centralized basis to put strategic initiatives into practice.