Meeting with the World Bank Vice President Held
18/05/2017
The Central Bank of Montenegro Governor, Mr Radoje Žugić, PhD, with his associates met with the World Bank delegation headed by Mr Cyril Muller, Vice President for Europe and Central Asia, who officially visited Montenegro for the first time.
After the welcome greetings, the Governor Žugić presented the basic economic indicators and conditions in the financial sector to the World Bank representatives, as well as the plans and activities of the CBCG for further strengthening of financial stability.
The Vice President Muller was pleased with cooperation between the World Bank and the CBCG, welcoming the progress made on establishing and maintaining financial system stability. He pointed out that the CBCG activities in area of harmonizing local regulations with the EU directives are very important, at the same time appreciating a significant drop in share of non-performing loans in the total assets of Montenegrin banks, recorded in the past years. “Fiscal stability, on one hand, and robust and resilient financial sector on the other are key elements in constructing and strengthening trust in creditworthiness of the country, as well as introducing component of predictability which, further on, give a strong incentive to accelerated economic growth” – said the World Bank Vice President.
The two exchanged their views on the future economic development in Montenegro and agreed that the economic policy should be created to release a huge growth potential available in our country and get focused, inter alia, on development of small and medium-sized businesses, which will contribute to opening of the new working positions, improving living quality of citizens and consequently, more abundant budgetary revenues.
The possibilities of arranging the budgetary support programme for Montenegro as well as activities and measures to be implemented with the aim of making the arrangement more concrete, were also discussed at the meeting. The Governor Žugić mentioned that the CBCG will implement all activities in the agreed terms, primarily related to further strengthening of regulatory framework, assessment of assets quality, introduction of the European standards and implementation of best practices, therefore giving full support to reaching the agreement on the budgetary support programme in such way.