Swiss Federal Councillor and Minister of Finance, Ueli Maurer visits several countries in Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan. The visit has taken place in the context of the 25th anniversary of the joint voting group with Switzerland in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. 

On the occasion of his visit to Kyrgyzstan, Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer met President Almazbek Atambaev and the Minister of Finance Adylbek Kasymaliev as well as the Governor of the National Bank Tolkunbek Abdygulov. In addition, he visited local companies and exchanged with local entrepreneurs and opinion leaders, including on export promotion and the “Taza Koom” (Clean society) project foreseeing the digitalisation of the society. 

The joint voting group in the IMF and the World Bank was founded in 1992. Next to Switzerland and Kyrgyzstan it today also includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan Poland, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (the latter only in the World Bank). On behalf of this voting group, Switzerland represents the constituency and its interests with one of the 24 seats in both the Board of Directors of the IMF and World Bank. 

On his visit Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer is accompanied by State Secretary Jörg Gasser of the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters in the Federal Department of Finance.

A well-balanced fiscal policy lays the ground for broad-based economic growth. In view of strengthening the capacities of the Kyrgyz authorities in formulating and implementing  effective macroeconomic policies, in capturing and assessing fiscal risks and in promoting fiscal transparency, this five-day training, tailored to the needs of the Kyrgyz Republic, was organized for representatives of Government agencies directly involved in the compilation of fiscal statistics.

The first workshop on this topic, in which six Kyrgyz officials participated, took place in November 2016 in Baku. Following this event, the IMF undertook a series of in-depth consultations with the Kyrgyz authorities in May this year, in order to further enhance the fiscal data compilation and to define the next steps to be taken to continue improving fiscal transparency.

Mrs. Ivana Jablonská, the project manager from the Statistics Department of the IMF congratulated the Kyrgyz authorities on the significant progress they have made in recent years in improving the coverage, timeliness and consistency of fiscal statistics. She highly appreciated the commitment of the Kyrgyz compilers and stressed the importance of inter-agency co-operation in the compilation of various data subsets of macroeconomic statistics.

The officials of the Ministry of Finance, National Statistical Committee, National Bank and the Social Fund demonstrated keen interest in learning the conceptual framework of the international standards and best compilation practices. The appropriate combination of lectures and case studies helped them to apply the newly acquired theoretical knowledge on practical exercises adapted to the Kyrgyz reality. The work on case studies provided a good opportunity to understand the practical application of fiscal statistics for the national policy making and cross-country comparisons.