On April 22, Seminar on "Risk Management and Basel II" was held at Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel. This event was organized for Top-Managers, Heads and Specialists of the Risk Management Departments. Seminar was financed by the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and organized by the National Bank of Georgia and the Financial Supervision Agency. Mr. George Glonti, the Vice-President of the National Bank of Georgia and George Kadagidze, the Head of the Banking Supervision Agency by the National Bank of Georgia attended the Seminar.

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) participated in the work of this seminar.

In his speech during the Seminar Mr. George Glonti specially emphasized the importance of moving to "Basel-II" system and noted that its implementation is planned for the year of 2011 in Georgia.

Seminar issues were 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 covered 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.

"Basel-II" which represents the recommendations of Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 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.