2015-12-10
Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, Vitas Vasiliauskas, to visit Stockholm at invitation of Governor of Sweden's central bank
On 10 December, Vitas Vasiliauskas, Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, will visit Sweden's central bank (Sveriges Riksbank). With this Bank's Board and experts, he will discuss the risks arising to the financial systems of both countries and measures applied to prevent likely risks. The Head of the Bank of Lithuania was invited to the seminar, organised by Sveriges Riksbank, to give an overview of the systemic risks relevant to the Nordic-Baltic Region and to present Lithuania's experience in implementing macroprudential policy measures for enhancing financial stability.
“The financial systems of the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic States are very closely interrelated; the successes of, threats to, and actions or the absence of action by each of them can have a direct or indirect impact on other countries. Therefore, institutions responsible for financial stability in their countries are concerned with stability in the entire region and the colleagues' actions to ensure it,” says V. Vasiliauskas.
He notes that colleagues from the Scandinavian central banks are particularly interested in the experience of the Bank of Lithuania, which was among the first central banks in Europe to start implementing measures for limiting the irresponsible lending of households. “The lessons that we learnt having survived a painful crisis and the new preventive instruments we apply are especially interesting to those Nordic countries that have been recording particularly strong increases in real estate prices,” says V. Vasiliauskas.
He emphasises that the understanding of recent trends and possible systemic threats by the states of the the Nordic-Baltic Region is very similar, while their assessment of the two most relevant financial risks is identical. “In the view of the Region's central banks and financial supervisory authorities, the major threat to the financial systems in the Region may stem from geopolitical instability in the east of Europe. The second commonly perceived risk that the countries see derives from very close financial links among the financial institutions in the Region,” Head of the Bank of Lithuania says.
At the invitation of Stefan Ingves, Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, Vitas Vasiliauskas, Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, will also attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm.
This year, the Nobel Prize, established by Sveriges Riksbank, for the merits in the economic sciences will be awarded to Angus Deaton, Princeton University Professor of Scottish origin. Sveriges Riksbank has also invited Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, to attend the ceremony.