2012-05-02
On 2 May, the Economics and Financial Stability Service started its operation at the Bank of Lithuania. The new unit is responsible for financial stability policy, monitoring and forecasting of economic processes and a smooth development of financial market infrastructure and payment instruments.
“The establishment of the new service will strengthen the macroprudential policy pursued by the Bank of Lithuania, which has the key objective of identifying and managing systemic micro-level risks, such as, for example, credit “bubbles”. If threats are neutralised in due time and by using adequate measures, the domestic economy will be sounder and more stable”, said Mr. Vitas Vasiliauskas, Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania.
According to him, the new structure will also enable a more effective performance of macroeconomic analysis, forecasting and statistical functions, financial market infrastructure risk will be analysed and the supervision policy of this infrastructure and payment instruments will be formed in one place.
The Economics and Financial Stability Service consists of three departments: Financial Stability, Economics and Statistics. The new service was established by reforming the Economics Department, the Payment Systems Policy Division of the Payment Systems Department and the Statistics Department.
The position of the Director of the Economics and Financial Stability Service will be held from 21 May by the economist Rūta Rodzko, who currently works at the strategic market research company “Euromonitor International”. The new service has 59 staff members.
The Economics and Financial Stability Service was established as part of the structural reform of the Bank of Lithuania, which aims at making the institution’s activity more efficient by consolidating the key functions in specialised services.
The Supervision Service has already been functioning since the beginning of this year. In addition to the Supervision Service and the Economics and Financial Stability Service, it is also planned to establish the Banking and Cash Management Services. Support functions will be consolidated within the Organization Service and several independent divisions.