Pandemic acclerated regulators’ interest in CBDC’s says Russia Central Bank. Representatives were unanimous in their predictions of the far-reaching implications of the current crisis at an online meeting of the Central Bank Governors’ Club, hosted this week by Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina.
The pandemic-induced expansion of e-commerce as well as digital settlement technologies was also noted at the meeting by 26 central bank representatives from Central Asia, the Black Sea region, the Balkan countries and beyond. From a central bank viewpoint, these developments are spurring financial regulators to take the digital currencies of central banks more seriously than ever before.
As reported, the overwhelming majority of central banks around the world have already engaged in some form of CBDC work. This mounting interest is reflected in the consistent uptick in official speeches on the issue since 2016.
At a follow-up meeting of the Central Bank Governors’ Club, hosted by Bank of Russia Deputy Governor Alexey Zabotkin, the representatives discussed financial regulators’ increased proactivity on the CBDC front during the pandemic.
As the Bank of Russia’s précis of the meeting summarized, attendees agreed on the need to assess the potential impact of CBDCs on states’ monetary policy and financial stability, as well as to evolve procedures to mitigate cyber risks.
The meeting reportedly convened not only central bankers from the CIS countries, Israel, and China, but also representatives from the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum, as well as from the Bank of International Settlements.
The latter has both participated in, and produced granular analyses of, global CBDC developments; for its part, the IMF has cooperated with multiple central banks on their joint CBDC research, while the WEF has recently focused attention on developing CBDC frameworks from the perspective of transnational governance .
[image: Alexander Popov]
