Muscat: Hamood bin Sangour Al-Zadjali, the Executive President of the Central Bank of Oman (CBO), presided yesterday at CBO Head Office over the annual meeting of CEOs and officials from local banks.
In the inaugural speech, he stated that this forum has acquired a lot of significance as it provides an opportunity to senior bankers and policy makers to come together to engage in a constructive dialogue on the major issues affecting the banking industry. He also affirmed that CBO accords highest importance to the deliberations in this forum as it helps it in fine-tuning its policies for the Oman’s economy in general and the banking industry in particular.
He also affirmed that the year 2013 was yet another successful year for our banking sector with positive growth in deposits, advances and profits, pointing out that banks at the end of 2013 remained well-capitalised and were able to adhere to Basel-III capital adequacy norms, which were issued by the CBO in November 2013.
Basel-III guidelines
“I congratulate the banking sector for their sincere efforts in meeting the enhanced and stringent Basel-III capital guidelines. Basel-III is not simply about asking banks to hold more capital. It is an opportunity for banks to improve the quality, consistency and transparency of their capital, which will help them to absorb cyclical shocks and losses,” .
In addition, the Central Bank of Oman chief spoke about the lessons learnt from global financial crisis, calling upon banks to focus their regulatory/ supervisory attention in accordance with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) guidelines on the subject, and to take care to ensure that Oman’s banks remain competitive vis-à-vis the banks of other countries.
