Update from Rupert Thorne, Deputy to the Secretary General, FSB
Dear Jo Marie
Happy New Year to you too, It is good to hear from you and to have the opportunity to answer your queries.
Countries were chosen for invitation to join the six Regional Consultative Groups through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Factors included the significance of a jurisdiction’s financial system (including both its size and its interconnectedness with financial systems in other countries), its participation in existing regional fora, sovereign status (i.e. whether it is a sovereign country or a non-sovereign jurisdiction), and expressions of interest in participating in the FSB regional groups. The regional groups have being kept limited in size in order to allow those attending sufficient opportunity to participate meaningfully in the group’s discussions, which means that about a dozen countries from outside the FSB have been invited to join each group. The criteria have been applied taking into account the particularities in each region so, for instance, the much larger size of financial systems in Europe than Africa on average means that the threshold of financial size for being invited o the European group was set considerably higher than for the African group.
The non-member co-chairs of the regional groups may be invited to attend the FSB Plenary meetings as observers, thus giving them the opportunity to take part in the discussions there and to inform the Plenary on the discussions in the regional groups.
The regional meetings will have agendas suggested by the two co-chairs, in consultation with the other members of the groups. All participants in the meetings have equal rights to speak and the intention is to encourage a two-way dialogue. They may choose to discuss a variety of types of issues: FSB policy initiatives, other policy topics suggested by regional members, or global or regional vulnerabilities. FSB Plenary documents will be shared with the regional groups, unless decided otherwise by the Plenary in the case of specific documents, thus giving the groups the opportunity to discuss FSB initiatives while policies are still in the process of being formulated. The initial meetings of the groups also discussed organisational matters for the future running of the groups.
The Middle East and North African Regional Consultative Group is co-chaired by Fahad Al-Mubarak, Governor, Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and Salem Al-Sabah, Governor, Central Bank of Kuwait and will hold its inaugural meeting later this month.
The Sub-Saharan Africa and CIS regional Consultative Groups are taking a little longer to get off the ground, because of delays in receiving replies to the invitations from all invitees in the region. In answer to your follow-up query about Francophone Africa, we have sent invitations to the largest Francophone ministries of finance and central banks, but have not yet received replies - we continue to follow up with them as it would be a loss to the group for Francophone Africa not to be represented in it,
- The Sub-Saharan African Group has Lesetja Kganyago, Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, as the FSB member co-chair, while the other co-chair is yet to be chosen. That group will meet in February.
- The CIS Regional Consultative Group has Sergei Storchak, Deputy Russian Finance Minister as FSB member co-chair, while the other co-chair and time of the first meeting have yet to be decided. This group will also meet in the coming weeks.
Agendas for the inaugural meetings of these remaining regional groups are likely to be very similar to those of the groups that have already met, since it is the first occasion for each of them. Over time, as the consultation process takes root, we would expect more diversity in the agendas according to the different regional interests that are expressed.
I hope you find this helpful.
Kind regards
Rupert Thorne
Deputy to the Secretary General
Financial Stability Board