Today, the Central Bank of Kuwait hosted the second meeting of the FSB Regional Consultative Group for the Middle East and North Africa (RCG-MENA) in Kuwait City. In 2011, six regional consultative groups1of the FSB were established responding to the call of the G20 Leaders at the Toronto Summit (June 2010), to bring together financial authorities from FSB member and non-member countries to exchange views on vulnerabilities affecting financial systems and on initiatives to promote financial stability.
In the meeting today, the members of the RCG-MENA discussed the FSB’s work plan and policy priorities, the FSB-led initiative to take forward the development of a global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) for financial markets, key issues in implementation of major financial regulatory reforms in the RCG-MENA member jurisdictions, and vulnerabilities and regional financial stability issues.
Discussions on regulatory reforms and their impacts centred around the approaches to dealing with the Domestic Systemically-Important Banks (D-SIBs) and the practical issues faced by the RCG members in implementing new liquidity standards. Under the vulnerabilities and regional financial stability issues, members discussed the risk of spill over to the regional economy and potential policy responses, as also the impact of current global events on the regional financial system. The monitoring roles of the global agencies and results of a survey conducted among the RCG-MENA members of selected prudential norms were also discussed.
The FSB Regional Consultative Group for the Middle East and North Africa is co-chaired by Fahad Al-Mubarak, Governor, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and Mohammad Y Al-Hashel, Governor, Central Bank of Kuwait. The current membership includes financial and regulatory authorities from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.