On April 22, Seminar on “Risk Management and Basel II” will be held at Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel for Top-Managers, Heads and Specialists of the Risk Management Departments. This event is arranged by the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) by the assistance of the National Bank of Georgia and Financial Supervision Agency. Seminar will be conducted by Mr. Cris van Kempen, Regional Head for Central & Eastern Europe, Russia and IS for ABN Amro Risk Advisory Services and Dr. Sibel Beadle, Principle Banker of the Financial Institutions Department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Seminar issues are mostly connected with the reduction of credit and other risks in the activities of commercial banks. Starting from 2009 European banks shall introduce a new system of risk management, requirements of which are established in Basel II agreement. Seminar will cover the issues of: the assessment of the value of capital, credit cycle management in practice, the role of Risk-Officers in the banks’ activities and others.

According to Mr. David Amaglobeli, the Acting President of the National Bank of Georgia: “Banking Supervision is based on “Basel I” principles in Georgia, but it is high time to start moving to “Basel-II”, which represents the recommendations of Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. “Basel II” was introduced in June 2004 and since then many countries of the world started to move to these new principles of banking supervision regulation. According to the data of the Financial Stability Institute, by the year of 2015, the regulators of approximately 95 countries shall have implemented the “Basel II” in some form or another. So, it’s very important for Georgia to start taking efforts to implement these principles, as introducing of this new system is a long and labour-intensive process. I hope that the above-mentioned conference will assist drawing a concrete plan of launching “Basel-II” in Georgia.”