Approved by the Resolution
of the Board of the National Bank
of the Kyrgyz Republic
№2021-П-07/52-1-(ВД)
dated September 22, 2021.
STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS
of the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic
for 2022-2025
The National Bank implements its activities focused on serving the interests of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Achieving and maintaining price stability in the economy by conducting effective monetary policy remains the main objective of the National Bank’s activity.
Creating favorable environment in the banking and payment systems, ensuring their reliability and safety, increasing the level of financial intermediation, developing innovative financial technologies, complying with the legislation in the field of consumer protection and financial inclusion are the key to sustainable development of the financial sector and essential conditions for long-term economic development of the Kyrgyz Republic.
The National Bank’s activity is based on openness and transparency of operation, professionalism of the employees, ensuring confidence in the financial-credit organizations and public understanding of its functions and powers.
The National Bank follows the following principles to implement the objectives set by the Constitutional Law “On the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic”:
- independence of activity in exercising its powers;
- accountability, openness and providing information to the public about the decisions made in implementing the goals and objectives;
- predictability of actions in the short and medium term;
- maintaining professionalism and competence of the employees.
Vision of the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic for 2022-2025.
In the sphere of monetary policy
- transition to the inflation targeting regime.
In the sphere of financial sector development
- achievement of the share of assets in the banking sector up to 54 percent of GDP;
- improvement of the financial literacy of the population in the Kyrgyz Republic through implementation of the targeted and effective measures covering the majority of the population;
- improvement of the regulatory legal framework to control the financial-credit organizations;
- implementation of the Strategy for Financial Inclusion in the Kyrgyz Republic for 2022-2026 ;
- development of the principles of Islamic finance;
- formation of the legal framework for use of electronic signature within the digital profile of the financial services users to create conditions for full-fledged e-service rendering to the economic agents.
In the sphere of payment systems
- development of digital remote service channels in all regions;
- striving to achieve an equilibrium ratio of cash and non-cash turnover.
In the sphere of cash circulation
- ensuring continuity, reliability and security of cash turnover;
- developing the domestic market of the banking instruments and investments.
In the sphere of ensuring the National Bank’s activity
- building up institutional stability and ensuring the National Bank’s uninterrupted activity.
Monetary Policy
Achieving and maintaining price stability in the Kyrgyz Republic through conducting the appropriate monetary policy is a legally established mandate of the National Bank.
Ensuring price stability and maintaining it at a sustainable level is a key element of macroeconomic stability for long-term stable economic development of the Kyrgyz Republic and contributes to formation of the rational inflation expectations in the economy.
The target of the monetary policy in the medium term is to keep the inflation rate at about 6 (+/-1 percent) percent. The National Bank will use a wide range of available monetary policy instruments in order to implement this objective.
Within the framework of gradual transition to the inflation targeting regime in the medium term, the National Bank’s efforts will be focused on:
- improving the transmission mechanism of the monetary policy measures impact on the economy by increasing the efficiency of the interest rate channel of monetary transmission and development of the interbank money market;
- increasing the efficiency and flexibility of the monetary policy instruments;
- ensuring balanced liquidity in the banking system;
- strengthening the communication component of the monetary policy.
The National Bank will continue to assess on a regular basis the external and internal factors of impact on inflation and will adhere to a balanced and conservative approach in formation of the macroeconomic forecasts using analytical and forecasting tools.
The choice of the monetary policy direction will be based on the analysis of macroeconomic forecasts and will be forward-looking, taking into account the time of impact of monetary decisions on the key macroeconomic indicators of the country.
The National Bank will continue to adhere to the policy of floating exchange rate and will conduct foreign exchange interventions in accordance with the objectives set by the monetary policy.
International reserves management will be implemented taking into account compliance with the basic principles of maintaining liquidity and ensuring safety of reserve assets.
Financial Sector Development
The National Bank’s activity will be focused on implementing the best international practices in terms of expanding the range of banking services and making them more attractive and accessible to the population.
The main priority areas for 2022-2025 will be as follows:
1. Enhancing the level of financial intermediation and increasing the share of banking system assets to GDP up to 54 percent by 2025.
Enhancing the level of financial intermediation implies increasing the share of banking system assets to GDP. The expected indicator “assets to GDP” should reach 54 percent in the banking sector by 2025. The following dynamics is projected: 2022 – 50.3 percent, 2023 – 51.5 percent, 2024 – 52.7 percent, 2025 – 54.0 percent.
2. Improvement of the regulatory legal framework relating to:
- protection of the banking and microfinance services consumers’ rights, completeness and accessibility of information on the financial organizations’ activities for the consumers and financial services provided by them, as well as improvement of mechanisms for resolving the disputes between the providers of financial services and their consumers;
- developing mechanisms for the commercial banks to conduct trade financing operations;
- banking supervision and regulation in accordance with the country’s legislation and the international standards of banking supervision;
- countering the financing of terrorism and anti-money laundering;
- harmonization of legislation in the financial sphere together with the central (national) banks of the EAEU member states.
3. Development of the Strategy for Financial Inclusion in the Kyrgyz Republic jointly with the International Finance Corporation and the state agencies.
Implementation of the Strategy by the state agencies will allow to increase accessibility of the financial services (inclusiveness) in the Kyrgyz Republic for the population in rural areas, remote and sparsely populated areas, where it is difficult to receive services on a regular basis.
The Strategy will include the following priority areas:
- digital financial services;
- diversification of financial products;
- consumer right protection;
- financial literacy of the population.
Measures to improve financial inclusion stipulated by the Strategy will contribute to inclusive growth and mobilization of the financial resources for economic development.
4. Development of the principles of Islamic finance.
The demand for Islamic banking products will be provided through introduction of the new products in accordance with the principles of Islamic finance, which will result in increased lending to the economy.
The National Bank will continue to introduce the best international practices of Islamic banking into the regulatory legal acts and promote development of the Islamic banking infrastructure. This will contribute to growth in the number of banks offering Islamic banking services and will increase the number the Islamic banking services consumers, which will finally enhance financial intermediation and welfare of the population.
5. Formation of a legal framework for use of the electronic signature and its connection with the digital profile of the financial services users to create conditions for full-fledged e-servicing.
Digital profile systems constitute the technological infrastructure that allows using the citizen’s data from different databases (state and financial) data available through the links from the systems with his/her consent provided in digital form.
In order to solve the problems of identification and formation of the digital profile for the financial services users, it is necessary to create the system of user digital identification in the banking sector for:
- identification and authentication of the banking services users with different levels of access and generation of cloud signature;
- conducting procedures according to the “know your customer” requirements;
- creating the software to obtain consents and signing documents electronically by the user in various systems;
- integration with databases on financial services recipients.
Solution of these issues will make it possible to develop the systems of remote servicing of the commercial banks and expand the use of digital technologies and access to banking services.
The National Bank will assist in creation of the remote identification infrastructure with the use of digital identifiers.
6. Within the framework of improving the regulatory legal framework for supervision of non-banking financial-credit organizations, the National Bank will introduce modern methods focused on:
- creation and improvement of the conditions for granting the guarantees by the guarantee funds to develop the market for granting guarantees;
- changing the requirements to the authorized capital of non-banking financial-credit organizations to preserve the stability of their activities;
- continuing the work on opening and development of apex institutions and self-regulatory organizations in the microfinance sphere.
7. Improvement of the financial literacy of the population in the Kyrgyz Republic.
The National Bank will continue taking measures to improve the financial literacy of the population in order to foster a financially literate civil society. Financial literacy will help to increase the efficient use of the financial instruments, raise awareness and coverage of the population about the benefits and risks of the financial products, which will contribute to growth of deposits in the banking system, improve the quality of the loan portfolio and expand investment opportunities.
Payment System
Ensuring efficiency, safety, and reliability of the payment system of the National Bank is among the tasks defined by the Constitutional Law of the Kyrgyz Republic “On the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic”. In order to fulfill this objective, efforts will be focused on maintaining the payment systems at a high technological level by introducing innovative technologies that ensure safe and efficient payments between different economic entities of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Developing the digital payment technologies in the Kyrgyz Republic, increasing the share of non-cash payments and settlements, improving the quality and accessibility of the digital payment services for the population in all regions of the country are the priority directions of the National Bank for 2022-2025.
To realize these directions, the National Bank will:
- promote creation of the favorable conditions for introduction of the digital payment services;
- develop remote channels for servicing the population that would expand the payment services coverage and reduce their cost for the population and the economic entities;
- strive for an optimal ratio of cash and non-cash turnover;
- develop the national payment system, take measures for its integration with the payment systems of other countries;
- improve the legislative framework on the payment system and information security for financial-credit and payment organizations;
- develop interaction between the center for monitoring information security and responding to the incidents and cyber threats in the banking and payment systems of the Kyrgyz Republic with the financial market participants and the international/republican cyber threat response centers.
Cash Turnover
To ensure regularity, reliability and security of cash turnover in the Kyrgyz Republic, the National Bank will take regular measures on preventing occurrence and distribution of the counterfeit banknotes and coins in the territory of the republic, as well as on cooperation with the law enforcement agencies for combating counterfeiting.
Work on comprehensive study of new developments in the field of banknotes and coins production, as well as on conducting an information campaign among the population on the protective elements of banknotes and coins of the national currency will be conducted in the medium term.
In order to ensure reliable and safe storage of cash, the National Bank will continue to work on implementation of the project for cash center construction in accordance with up-to-date standards, which will promote optimization and automation of cash turnover technological processes.
In order to provide further development of the bank precious metals market in the Kyrgyz Republic, the National Bank will continue to increase output of the domestic gold measuring bars, as well as to expand the range of refined gold measuring bars of other weight categories.
Providing the National Bank’s Activity
The following measures will be taken to provide the National Bank’s activity:
1) management of the subsidiary and associated organizations in accordance with the legislation and strategic documents of the Kyrgyz Republic in order to implement the objectives of the National Bank and the rights of the National Bank as a shareholder/participant in the legal entities;
2) provision with necessary personnel for implementation of the bank’s objectives, improvement of the system of personnel training and professional development, and effective motivation system; introduction of personnel management automation;
3) ensuring continuity of the National Bank’s activity focused on fulfillment of its main goals and objectives through development of the internal processes, enhancement of corporate culture and improvement of the internal regulatory documents.
4) improvement of the information security system in the National Bank and the corporate information security management system, as well as the means and methods of technical security of the National Bank’s facilities in accordance with the best international practices and standards.
1, 2, 3 Amended by Resolution of the Board of the National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic №2022-П-25/77-1-(ВД) dated December 9, 2022.