Under a Group of seven mandates, 23 central banks agreed to cooperate with the International Monetary Fund to provide intensive central banking technical assistance to the Baltic States and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) beginning in 1992. The Monetary and Exchange Affairs department of the IMF has served as the coordinating agency for these programs, with the support of the Bank for International Settlement. Under this arrangement, the cooperating central banks routinely release their professional staff to participate in technical assistance missions in central banking topics assigned to them.
As part of the coordination process to the Monetary and Exchange Affairs department organized a special Joint Meeting on Central Banking technical Assistance which for the first time was held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 13-15, 1994. Those meetings were the first occasion on which both the donors and recipient of central banking technical assistance met to review the progress and effectiveness of technical assistance to plan for further assistance. The joint meetings provided a forum for the central banks of the CIS to share their thoughts, strategies, and experiences, not only with the cooperating central banks but most important also among themselves.
This volume provides a review of the first four years of structural reforms in the monetary and exchange areas and identifies priorities for the deepening of reforms. The exercise is designed to highlight linkages among the reform components, the coordination of these components to support market-based arrangements for monetary control, and the main obstacles on the road ahead.