The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH) has made methodological changes regarding the statistics of monetary and financial sectors, with regard to the foreign currency indexed financial instruments classification.
In this way, an important alignment with international standards has been made, thus improving the quality and international comparability of the CBBH data.
The new Manual and the Monetary and Financial Statistics Compilation Guide of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2016 and the European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA 2010) stipulate that foreign currency indexed instruments should be classified as foreign currency instruments. Consequently, starting from January 2019, a reclassification of the currency structure of financial instruments (loans, securities, deposits) originally reported in KM, which are indexed to a foreign currency, has been made from the domestic currency position into the foreign currency position.
The total amounts of loans and deposits did not change, but there was a change in the currency structure, so foreign currency deposits increased by about KM 1.9 billion (with a decrease in the domestic currency deposit category at the same time). Regarding loans, the effects of these changes are even more pronounced, as foreign currency indexed loans in the amount of over KM 10.5 billion since January have been classified as foreign currency loans.
The IMF organized the Technical Assistance Mission for Monetary and Financial Statistics for BH in the period from 8 to 19 October 2018, when these methodological changes were analyzed and prepared, and commercial banks were able to make changes in reporting to the CBBH in a short time period.
