The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) was recently invited to become a member of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), showing the BIS’s recognition of Vietnam’s socio-economic achievements as well as the SBV’s attainments in steering the monetary policy and managing the banking system.

The headquarters of the State Bank of Vietnam in Hanoi (Photo: VNA) 

The central bank said the BIS membership will facilitate it and Vietnam’s banking network to access the highest principles and standards of the global financial system, thereby helping to accelerate the domestic financial-banking system’s integration into the world and enhance the capacity and competitiveness of the system and the whole economy.

As a BIS member, the SBV will directly engage in the formation of standards, principles, criteria and practices of the world’s financial, monetary and banking activities, creating chances to deal with specific issues of the economy and the domestic financial-banking system.

This marks a new stride in the international integration process of the SBV as well as the whole banking system, the bank noted.

On January 14, the BIS Board of Directors – the highest decision-making body of the BIS – invited the SBV and the central banks of Morocco and Kuwait to become members, raising the membership to 63.

This is the BIS’s first such expansion since 2011.

In its press release, the BIS said it is set to expand its central bank membership base and increase collaboration in its work as a forum for international cooperation as well as a hub for central banks and other financial authorities.

The BIS, founded in 1930 and based in Basel city of Switzerland, is an international organisation of central banks, and it is even considered the “central bank for central banks”. It aims to promote cooperation among central banks and other agencies to ensure monetary and financial stability around the globe.