Sarajevo, 17 May 2019

Governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH) Senad Softić, PH.D. is attending the meeting within the regular annual Economic and Financial Dialogue between the European Union and the countries of the Western Balkans and Turkey, which is taking place on May 17, 2019 in Brussels, the Kingdom of Belgium.

The meeting is dedicated to the dialogue on economic policies and the progress of the implementation of the Economic Reform Program (ERP). Through this process, candidate countries and potential candidates from the Western Balkans and Turkey have been enabled to have a dialogue and common conclusions on economic, fiscal and structural measures with EU institutions in a very similar way to the EU member states.

In his address, Governor Softić emphasized the importance of this process and the fact that progress is being made in implementing the ERP, despite the fact that the process involves simultaneously implementing of multiple reforms whose results must be in line with EU regulations.

"Sound monetary policy and financial system should be support for achieving better economic performance, and the CBBH is fully committed to achieve this goal. The current model of monetary policy is successful and our financial sector is continuously strengthening", said Softić, adding that monetary and fiscal policy are not sufficient alone, but in order to increase citizens' standards it is necessary to continue with the implementation of structural reforms.

The governor said that during this period, the CBBH actually has made several steps to implement recommendations from previous joint conclusions, including the development of new statistical categories and analytical tools, and the improvement of the analytical framework for forecasting.

One of the main topics at the meeting was stimulating the inflow of foreign direct investments, where Governor Softić emphasized that the potentials of Bosnia and Herzegovina were also recognized during the EBRD's Annual Meeting and Business Forum, held recently in Sarajevo, which was very successful, among other things, in terms of promoting and attracting future investments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, current practices show that most foreign investors remain in Bosnia and Herzegovina and reinvest profit from previous investments, which is a sign of improvement of business environment.

At the end of his presentation, the Governor thanked to the EU institutions, the ECB and the ESCB for generous professional and financial assistance, without which it would be very difficult to implement the process of necessary reforms.

Representatives of the countries of the EU, the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well as, representatives of the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB), are participating in the dialogue.