Addis Ababa, 16 March 2015 (ECA) - The Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union Commission will host the second Caucus of African Central Bank Governors, in Addis Ababa in the margins of the eighth Joint Annual Meetings of the AU Specialized Technical Committee on Finance, Monetary Affairs, Economic Planning and Integration and the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. The Conference will be held on the theme, Implementing Agenda 2063 - Planning, Mobilizing and Financing for Development. The meeting will take place on 29 March at the UN Conference Centre.
The main objectives of the Caucus are to identify concrete follow-up measures to the outcomes of the first Caucus, which was held in Abuja in 2014. They will also look into measures to enhance the role of governors of central banks in the consultations leading up to the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place in July 2015 whose outcomes are expected to have direct implications for central banks in Africa.
The Caucus, which brings together the governors of central banks of a number of African countries, will provide a unique opportunity for governors to engage in structured dialogue on the issues that they would like to see reflected in the outcome document. An action plan will be developed, outlining a road map for the implementation of the proposals of the first Caucus that was held in Abuja.
Key actors involved in the post-2015 development agenda, as well as the financing for sustainable development discussions will be in attendance to ensure synergies between the two processes.
Note to Editors:
The Governors last met in Abuja, Nigeria, March 27, 2014 during the Seventh Joint Annual Meetings of the ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance on the theme, “Industrialization for inclusiveness and Transformative Development in Africa.”
The governors discussed the critical role in promoting the establishment and sustainability of regional capital markets through harmonization and coordination across countries and providing well-resourced regulatory instruments and agencies that can encourage the growth and integrity of financial institutions and limit money laundering. They also noted that rapid innovations in financial services offer exciting opportunities for monetary policy to play an even more important role in promoting inclusive industrial development. They discussed how monetary policy can be made consistent with Africa’s structural transformation agenda and debated the challenge by ECA Executive Secretary, Carlos Lopes, on trade-offs between the central banks’ core mandate of price stability and the objective of financial access and economic stimulus for industrial development.
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