| The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies - WIIW |
Despite remarkable success in macroeconomic stabilization since the
end of 1993, the reform of the banking system has been proceeding only
slowly. Bank rehabilitation began in late 1995 and speeded up in 1996.
The first results of rehabilitation are encouraging: liquidity increased
substantially, interest rates declined, solvency improved. Consolidation
of the results achieved is an important precondition for successful privatization
to be started this year.
Basic information on the emerging banking system in Macedonia
The banking system of newly independent Macedonia had to face all the
difficulties connected with the circumstances of the new state's birth:
high currency substitution, low monetization of the economy, lost foreign
assets at the central bank of the former Yugoslavia. The rehabilitation
of the banking system, which followed a serious crisis, improved the soundness
of the banking sector. The change of the old banks' ownership structure
has been one of the main ingredients of the reforms recently.
OECD-WIIW Seminar on bank restructuring in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia
The OECD/WIIW seminar (held in Vienna in December 1996) discussed the
current stage of banking sector restructuring in four Central-East European
countries. It focused on the process of rehabilitating the banking sector,
the macroeconomic implications of a banking crisis, the designing of strategies
to manage it in the light of the experience of OECD countries and transition
economies, the relationship between banks and enterprises, and the importance
of regulations, supervision and the enforcement of regulations.