The MNB held a knowledge sharing event for the Western Balkan countries within the framework of an international collaboration

As part of an international collaboration, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) once again hosted a training event for the central banks of the Western Balkans countries. In the framework of an EU-funded knowledge sharing project, the MNB held a seminar on statistics between 6-8 November 2024 with the participation of experts from the Portuguese and Polish central banks. The MNB considers of utmost importance the support of the Western Balkans central banks, therefore, in addition to its own technical assistance program, it actively participates in targeted EU programs to promote the integration of the participating partner countries as efficiently as possible.

In the framework of the EU-funded programme, entitled “Strengthening the Central Bank Capacities in the Western Balkans with a view to the integration to the European System of Central Banks (ESCB)” the Magyar Nemzeti Bank organized a training event on “Statistics” which was held 6-8 November in Budapest. Presentations were delivered by experts from the Narodowy Bank Polski, the Banco de Portugal and the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, while 18 participants from the central banks of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia took part in the event personally. The seminar also created opportunity for the central banks of the region to exchange experience with their colleagues from the ESCB on the recent developments in the field of statistics.

The experts of the MNB presented their experience, that they gathered during the compilation of the balance sheets of groups of nonbank financial institutions and presented the existing EU requirements in this area. In addition, the practice of MNB's green activities and green data provision was presented, which also covered the usage of the collected data.

With the help of the MNB, the Western Balkan partners gained insight into these methodologies and approaches in relation to the implementation of data governance. They also received detailed information on data-focused machine learning methods, which covered the recognition of potential data errors in the MNB's datasets, the possibilities for imputing missing data, and synthetic data generation.

The objective of the Western Balkans EU program, implemented between 2022-2025 with the active participation of 19 central banks from the EU, is to strengthen the capacities of the beneficiary institutions with particular regard to the development of their analytical and political tools, as well as the transfer of the best international and European practices into national practice.