SBP holds webinar on finance

KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday hosted a webinar titled “Economic Modeling and Forecasting - Practices in Central Banks”, to discuss what innovations could be deployed to improve policymaking.

According to a statement, Dr Murtaza Syed, Deputy Governor, SBP inaugurated the seminar, which was held virtually under the SAARCFINANCE forum – the regional network of SAARC central banks and finance ministries.

Besides Pakistan, officials from central banks of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka attended the webinar.

The speakers presented their insightful research on different areas of macroeconomic modeling and forecasting.

Professor Vasco J. Gabriel, Reader in Economics, University of Surrey, shared a framework to implement money growth rules in a medium-sized emerging open economy.

Gabriel showed that applying this model to actual data yielded insightful results.

Dr Wasim Shahid Malik, SBP Chair, University of Peshawar drew the attention of researchers and policymakers towards the long-term gains associated with disinflationary policies.

Azhar Iqbal, from Wells Fargo Securities, USA, shared interesting and innovative developments in modeling and forecasting of macroeconomic variables, including in the context of heightened uncertainty stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Iqbal’s proposals to construct an Animal Spirits Index as well as study the asymmetric effects of Covid-19 on growth and inflation in SAARC economies were extremely relevant for their policymaking.

Officials from SAARC central banks shared the evolution and current state of economic modeling at their respective institutions.

The seminar provided researchers from SAARC countries a valuable and unique opportunity for knowledge sharing and learning from each other’s experiences.