Peter Nicholl attended the annual meeting of the BIS

The Governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia & Herzegovina (CBBH), Peter Nicholl attended the annual meeting of the Bank for International Settlements, (BIS) in Basle Switzerland on the 6th and 7th of June.
The CBBH became a shareholder member of the BIS in December 1997. Forty-five (45) central banks from around the globe are members but representatives of over 100 central banks attended the annual meeting.
The BIS has two major functions. It provides secure and liquid investment options for central banks' foreign reserves holdings. The CBBH currently holds about one-quarter of its' reserves on deposit with the BIS.
While in Basle, Mr. Nicholl met with senior officials of the BIS' banking department and other staff of the CBBH will visit the BIS in the next month to continue discussion on foreign reserve management options.
The other major role of the BIS is to foster international financial cooperation. The BIS has been a very European focused institution, but it is increasingly becoming a major forum for global cooperation amoungst central bankers and banking supervisors. In the last year it has opened its' second office, which is located in Hong Kong, and over recent years the number of member central banks from Asia and Latin America has increased.
In his report to the Annual Meeting, Urban Backstrom, President of the BIS and Governor of Swedens' Central Bank said that "structural reforms are urgently needed in many industrialized countries to tackle the threat posed by economic imbalances to a recovery in global growth." He also called for a restructuring of the corporate and banking sectors in emerging market economies, with a clear recognition of losses in order to restore profitability.
"The economic outlook presented in the BIS's Annual Report was a reasonably optimistic one," Mr. Nicholl said, "Certainly more optimistic than looked likely until very recently." But the BIS also cautioned that forecast of an "orderly slowdown" in US economic growth and expectations of a recovery in Europe and south-east Asia should not be interpreted as a signal that the danger of financial and economic instability had passed. "The clear message is that financial reforms are still critical in many countries," Mr. Nicholl said, "and BiH is one of those countries."