Central Bank of the Republic of Kosovo steps up IMF cooperation on supervisory reforms including SREP alignment, a countercyclical capital buffer and crypto-asset regulation

The Central Bank of the Republic of Kosovo published a readout of Governor Ahmet Ismaili’s meeting in Vienna with Sebastian Sosa, the International Monetary Fund’s Regional Resident Representative for the Western Balkans, focused on strengthening institutional cooperation and ongoing IMF-supported reforms in Kosovo’s financial sector. Discussion covered recent economic and financial-sector developments and a pipeline of regulatory and capacity-building work within the central bank’s mandate. Key items included strengthening supervision through closer alignment with international standards and approaches to assessing core risk elements under the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP), implementing countercyclical capital buffers for all banks as part of amendments to the capital adequacy regulation, and progress on a regulatory framework for crypto-assets following consultations with the IMF team. The agenda also addressed advancing the Emergency Liquidity Assistance framework, implementing recommendations from the IMF Safeguards Assessment including drafting proposed amendments to the Central Bank Law, and a new Central Bank Transparency Code project. The Transparency Code project is set to be developed further during the upcoming IMF Annual Meetings, while both sides agreed to maintain close cooperation and a high level of transparency to support implementation of the ongoing reforms.