IMF Lauds CBE's Progress in Various Sectors

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission praised in a report the progress witnessed by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) in various sectors since the previous assessment in 2017 and the efforts made to prepare the bank's new draft law.

This came after a series of virtual meetings held between members of the IMF's mission and CBE's representatives to assess the bank's internal work mechanisms and determine their efficiency.

The report lauded the CBE's approach in managing financial and non-financial risks, which is applied and managed centrally through the Central Department of Central Risks and Information Security, in line with international practices and leading standards in this field.

The report referred to the remarkable development in the internal audit mechanisms at the Central Bank in addition to the external audit, welcoming the steps taken towards applying the latest accounting standards.

A safeguards assessment is a diagnostic review of a central bank’s governance and control framework. Five key areas denoted by the acronym ELRIC are assessed to help safeguard IMF disbursements and minimize the risk of inaccurate reporting of key data to the IMF (“misreporting”). Governance is an overarching principle transcending all ELRIC areas.

IMF hails CBE's strong & stable governance

The evaluation resulted in a number of important results, including that the safeguards recommendations for the year 2017 were implemented with the best practices and standards with regard to the bank's external audit mechanism.

The results of the evaluation indicated that the CBE has taken remarkable steps towards strengthening the legal framework of the bank and the banking system by completing the preparation of the final draft of the Central Bank and Banking Sector Law.

IMF emphasized that the governance system in the Central Bank is strong and stable, and that the bank's audit committee performs effective and close control over the bank’s operations and transactions, in addition to the governance framework for managing foreign reserves as well as payments made on behalf of the government.