On November 5, 2019 at the headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong had a meeting with Mr. Nathan Epstein, Deputy Director of the IMF-Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI).
On behalf of the SBV Management Board, Deputy Governor Nguyen Thi Hong expressed her thanks for the IMF in general and the Technical Cooperation Mission in particular for having supported the SBV during the formulation and implementation of the Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS) over the past time. She emphasized the need for the SBV to work towards modernizing the monetary policy. Specifically, the SBV has finalized the establishment of a Forecasting Group for FPAS implementation and appointed Mr. Pham Chi Quang, Deputy Director General of the Monetary Policy Department to be the group leader. Parallelly, the SBV has sent its officials to attend the training courses on Monetary Policy Modernization in Delhi, India and on Model-Based Monetary Policy Analysis and Forecasting (MPAF) in Manila, the Philippines, etc.
At the meeting, the two sides updated each other on the progress of the FPAS implementation. Accordingly, the SBV and the IMF have closely followed the tasks set out in the IMF's Action Plan within the framework of the FPAS Technical Cooperation Mission. Mr. Nathan Epstein, Deputy Director of the IMF-STI emphasized that the IMF's FPAS Technical Cooperation Mission has high evaluation for the Forecasting Group established by the SBV in general and each member of the Group in particular. In the first phase of the Project (September 2019 - June 2020), the members of the Forecasting Group would be trained to use Mathlab, the forecasting models such as NTF, Bayesian VAR, QPM, etc.
According to the Deputy Director of the IMF-STI, the SBV Forecasting Group has received high evaluation for having well conducted the offsite support component through accomplishing the practical exercises and documents reading under the guidance of the IMF experts. “From our experience in working with many central banks’ core forecasting groups, the SBV Forecasting Group clearly indicates a diversity of knowledge and experience bases, with a specially good coordination and support mechanism among the members of the Group,” shared the STI Deputy Director.
Also at the meeting, the STI Deputy Director extended an invitation to the SBV Deputy Governor to attend the high-level conference on communication of Central Banks held by the STI in December 2019.
Le Hang