Koba Gvenetadze, Governor of the National Bank of Georgia, participated in the high-rank conference of the IMF and World Bank Belgium-Netherlands constituency countries. Organized every year by the National Bank of Belgium and the Netherlands’ Central Bank since 2014, the event focused on macroeconomic challenges, high inflation and growing financial inequality in the wake of worldwide geopolitical tensions.

Koba Gvenetadze spoke extensively about the role of central banks in his speech, drawing attention to the recent trends in reduction of monetary policy rate.

"Inflation is probably the biggest problem facing the global economy today, even if the past few months have been more promising with global food, oil and transportation prices turning for the better." Due to these events, central banks had to increase interest rates faster than expected. They signaled that rates would remain high for longer. We believe that tight monetary policy is the least costly alternative for our economies today in the long run. We must remember that the long-term benefits of maintaining price stability are much higher than the short-term costs of temporary restrictions on economic activity," said the President of the National Bank.

“Today inflation is probably the biggest global economic challenge, even if latest few months have been more promising in this respect due to a reversal in global food, oil and transportation prices. These developments have caused central banks to raise interest rates faster than expected, and to signal that rates will stay elevated for longer. We believe that tight policy today is the least costly option for our economies in the long-run. We should remember that long-term benefits of maintaining price stability far outweigh these short-term costs of temporarily restraining economic activity,” said NBG Governor Koba Gvenetadze.

Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former Secretary General of NATO, along with the representatives of the IMF and the World Bank Belgium-Netherlands constituency countries, participated in the closed discussion conference.