Meetings of the Montenegrin delegation with the World Bank representatives

15/04/2023

Continuing the annual spring meetings in Washington, Montenegro’s delegation led by Finance Minister Aleksandar Damjanović and the CBCG Governor Radoje Žugić met with the World Bank senior officials – Koen Davidse, the Executive Director, and Antonella Bassani, the Vice President of Europe and Central Asia Region.

At the meeting, they assessed the cooperation between the World Bank and Montenegro as highly successful. With the World Bank’s support, numerous projects are being implemented to improve Montenegro’s infrastructure and strengthen the country’s economic and financial performance.

Minister Damjanović highlighted that the public finances stability, the tax revenues growth and the public debt reduction created a sound basis for the successful implementation of numerous projects started with the World Bank, including the DPL arrangement that should support Montenegro in the coming period.

In that regard, the speakers jointly assessed that the agreed arrangement preconditions under the Ministry of Finance’s jurisdiction had been mostly fulfilled, which is also expected from other institutions included in the arrangement.

Emphasising that the CBCG has no obligations to the DPL arrangement, Governor Žugić thanked the World Bank representatives for the support provided to the CBCG, especially in payment system upgrading. Further cooperation on applying international standards and best practices in banking supervision and resolution was announced. “The banking sector’s soundness and stability were confirmed through the important international institutions’ evaluations and the asset quality review carried out following high international standards,” said Žugić. The Governor also assessed that financial stability resulted from positive banking sector trends – adequate banks’ capitalisation, intensive lending activities aimed at economic growth, and continuous asset quality growth and improvement with a non-performing loans reduction. “The only negative trend refers to the slight interest rate increase resulting from high inflation and the Euribor growth,” concluded Žugić.