The Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Timothy N. J. Antoine reflects on the work and performance of the Bank over the 2020/2021 financial year and discusses the outlook for the year ahead on this episode of ECCB Connects.
The ECCB recently published its 2020-2021 Annual Report and Statement of Accounts which saw that the Bank recorded a net profit of $25.2 million for the financial year ended 31 March 2021, a 60.1 per cent decrease from the profit reported in the prior year.
The report further indicates that the decrease in net profit was due principally, to a significant reduction in interest income earned on the Bank’s foreign reserves portfolio.
Speaking on ECCB Connects, Governor Antoine says, “the reality is that we’ve had the single largest growth shock on the record. Our economies contracted last year, 2020, by 14.0 per cent. That’s bigger than the Global Financial Crisis when the contraction was 6.0
per cent.”
The Governor however highlights the importance of financial stability and the ECCB’s relentless quest of socio-economic transformation; a quest which he says the Bank is even more determined to pursue in the face of the challenges brought on by the pandemic.
Keeping the ECCB Staff safe and serving the region well continue to be the Bank’s top priorities, Governor Antoine said, as he outlines a number of programmes the ECCB initiated to help to move the region forward.
He says that as the ECCB looks ahead some of the areas of focus will be: continued focus on Financial Stability; Digital Transformation and Environmental; Social and Corporate Governance.
For more information on the Governor’s outlook for the new financial year, view this week’s episode of ECCB Connects on the ECCB website www.eccb-centralbank.org and its social media pages.
