Meeting Selimović – Hunn: Successful Cooperation between the CBBH and the Swiss Government

The Bilateral Assistance and Capacity Building Program for Central Banks, financed by the Swiss Government, has been a project of years long successful cooperation and joint partnership between the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the CBBH) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and Institute of International Studies in Geneva, it has been stressed during the meeting of the Governor of the CBBH, Jasmina Selimović, Ph.D. and Ambassador of Switzerland in BH, H.E. Daniel Hunn.

^{Ambassador of Switzerland in BH, H.E. Daniel Hunn and Governor of the CBBH Jasmina Selimović, Ph.D.}

This program has been implemented in stages for ten years, and the agreement on the implementation of the third stage of the program between the CBBH and the SECO has been recently signed for the period from 2023 to 2028. Governor Selimović thanked the Swiss Ambassador and the Swiss Government for recognising the importance of the CBBH and their continuing support and providing technical assistance with purpose of harmonisation of the CBBH standards with the European ones.

 „The preparations for the future membership of the CBBH in the community of the Central Banks of the European Union is a large challenge on BH path to the European Union. This requires clear engagement of domestic institutions, including, of course, the Central Bank, in building institutional and technical foundations for monetary policy and financial stability," the Governor said.

On this path, the support of Switzerland is extremely important and valuable, whose Government, in its strategy of cooperation, ranked the CBBH among the priority institutions. The project, whose implementation is underway, is focused on the improvement of monetary policy, including the management of foreign exchange reserves and the implementation of a research strategy in accordance with the requirements of the European Union, then on financial stability, statistics and strengthening the framework of communication with the public, and on resilience and risk management. For the realization of all above mentioned, the CBBH staff and their expertise, which is unquestionable, are of key importance. This expertise has been acquired, among other things, thanks to education, cooperation and exchange of experiences within the Swiss Government projects, said Governor Selimović.

Ambassador Hunn also emphasized the extremely high-quality relations of the Government of Switzerland and its financial institutions with the CBBH, and expressed satisfaction with the mutual cooperation and the results it provided, as well as faith that the program, which is currently being implemented, will be as successful as in previous years.