CBBiH: Alignment with New International Standards in Monetary and Financial Sector Statistics

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBiH) has made methodological changes regarding the statistics of the monetary and financial sector, in connection with the classification of financial instruments with a foreign currency clause.

In this way, an important alignment with international standards was carried out, thus improving the quality and international comparability of CBBiH data, the CBBiH announced.

The new Manual and Guide for the Compilation of Monetary and Financial Statistics of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2016, as well as the European Statistical Standards (ESA 2010), prescribe that instruments with a currency clause should be classified as instruments in foreign currency. Accordingly, starting from the January 2019 data, a reclassification of the currency structure of financial instruments (loans, securities, deposits) originally expressed in BAM, which have a currency clause, was made from domestic currency positions to foreign currency positions.

The total amounts of loans and deposits have not changed, but there has been a change in the currency structure, so deposits in foreign currency increased by about 1.9 billion BAM (with a simultaneous decrease in the category of deposits in domestic currency). On the loan side, the effects of these changes are even more pronounced, as loans with a currency clause in the amount of over 10.5 billion BAM have been classified as loans in foreign currency since January.

The IMF organized a Technical Assistance Mission for Monetary and Financial Statistics for BiH in the period 8-19 October 2018, when these methodological changes were analyzed and prepared, and commercial banks managed to make changes in reporting to the CBBiH in a short period of time.