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30/03/2020

At today’s session, the Council of the Central Bank of Montenegro (CBCG) discussed and adopted the Financial Statements of the Central Bank of Montenegro for 2019, together with the Independent Auditor’s Report.

The Independent External Auditor gave a positive opinion to the CBCG’s financial statements. The Auditor noted that “in all material respects, the accompanying financial statements give a true and fair view of the Central Bank of Montenegro’s financial position as at 31 December 2019 and of its financial performance and cash flows for the year ending that day, following International Financial Reporting Standards.” Moreover, the independent external auditor did not give any recommendation on the overall performance of the Central Bank in the process of auditing the CBCG’s financial statements for 2019.

According to the 2019Financial Statements data, total revenues of the CBCG amounting to 18.3 million euros were 16.15% higher than planned and 9.42% higher than in 2018. Besides, trends in operating expenses confirmed the rational operation of the CBCG. Precisely, operating expenses, accounting for 84.12% of total expenditures, were executed at the 2018 costs level and were 3.6% lower than planned. Administrative and operating costs were lower than planned, owing to rationalization and internal economy measures continuing throughout 2019.

Resulting from such operations, CBCG recorded a net profit of 4.7 million euros in 2019, the highest one over the previous ten years. Under the Central Bank of Montenegro Law, the CBCG reported a distribution profit of 6.3 million euros.

At today’s meeting, the Council adopted the Decision on distributing the CBCG profit for 2019, according to which 2.5 million euros will be allocated to the Budget of Montenegro. The CBCG initiated to meet this obligation as soon as possible, well before the legal deadline, taking into account the current situation and the need to conduct activities combating the coronavirus epidemic.

The Council also adopted a Decision on increasing the CBCG’s initial capital, according to which the initial capital of the CBCG increases by 3 million euros, thus fully implementing the obligation set out in the Central Bank of Montenegro Law, according to which the core capital has to be 50,000,000 euros. To wit, the total amount of missing initial capital in the period 2010-2019 of 16.16 million euros was reimbursed from profit sharing.