Gratitude to the IMF for its Support and Successful Cooperation

14/12/2023

The CBCG Governor Radoje Žugić met today with Mr. Sebastian Sosa, the IMF Regional Resident Representative for the Western Balkans.

At the meeting, they discussed Montenegro’s overall economic situation, focusing on its banking sector and expressing satisfaction that all key banking operations ratios in Montenegro recorded historically the most favourable values and positive trends.

Governor Žugić presented the latest data for ten months this year, indicating growth in bank assets of 10.4%, loans of 12% and deposits of 10.6% compared to last October. “While credit growth makes room for economic recovery, deposit growth points to a high trust in banks and the supervisor,” Governor Žugić pointed out. He added that banks had no recognised vulnerabilities and represented the soundest part of the domestic economic system. The data also depict the continued decline in non-performing loans, which improves the assets’ quality. At the end of this October, NPLs amounted to 4.82% or 1.32 percentage points lower year-on-year. The effective lending interest rate in October this year was 6.49% or 0.81 percentage points higher compared to October 2022, which is several times lower than the growth of Euribor as a reference interest rate.

Governor Žugić pointed out that such results were contribution of, inter alia, the intensive and constructive cooperation of the CBCG with the IMF and the implementation of numerous IMF technical assistance programs for Montenegro, for which he extended his thanks to Mr. Sosa and the entire IMF team.