First CPSS meeting in the Americas

Press release  | 
17 May 2000

(1) The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the central banks of the Group of Ten countries (CPSS) held its first meeting on the American continent on 16 and 17 May.

The regular committee meetings of the CPSS are held twice a year. Until last year, these meetings had always taken place exclusively at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland.

Last year in May, the first meeting outside Basel was held at the BIS Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

For this year's spring meeting, the CPSS met in Mexico. It thereby acknowledged the valuable contribution of Latin American countries and central banks, in particular those of Mexico and Brazil, to the efforts of the CPSS in drafting the Core Principles for systemically important payment systems, and it also acknowledged Latin American and Caribbean countries' current involvement in the ongoing joint efforts of the CPSS and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) to develop recommendations for securities settlement systems. The CPSS also acknowledges the importance of robust payment and settlement systems in Latin America and the Caribbean in general.

The Mexico City meeting was chaired by Mr Wendelin Hartmann, Member of the Directorate of the Deutsche Bundesbank. Mr Hartmann will retire at the end of June. The G10 Governors have already nominated Mr Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, to be his successor as Chairman of the CPSS.

With the support of the Bank of Mexico, the meetings were held at the Club de Banqueros in Mexico City. The Bank of Mexico hosted a dinner for the CPSS on 16 May.

(2) The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems of the central banks of the Group of Ten countries (CPSS) held its first workshop with senior officials of invited central banks from Latin American and Caribbean countries at CEMLA in Mexico City on Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 May 2000. The workshop preceded the first CPSS meeting in the Americas on 16 and 17 May.

For the first time, the CPSS has organised a workshop that brought together the CPSS members and senior policymakers from the Americas.

It his opening remarks,

Mr José Sidaoui, Deputy Governor of the Banco de Mexico said:

"The Banco de Mexico has given high priority to the payment system reforms and has created a group of high-level specilaists who also evaluate theimpact of the payment system on the goals of the central banks in the context of the entire economy. The Banco de Mexico fully supports the most recent efforts untedtaken under the auspices of the CPSS to identify and reach consenus on best practices for the design and operation of payment and settlement systems."

Mr Hartmann, Chairman of the CPSS said:

"In today's world with increasingly global financial transactions, payment systems cannot remain a matter of merely national interest. It is essential that payment system experts cooperate and learn from each other in order to contribute to financial stability and that the reform of payment and settlement systems is supported at the highest levels of the central banks."

The workshop was attended by senior central bank representatives responsible for policy regarding payment and settlement systems from sixteen Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well the members of the CPSS from the G10 countries and from the monetary authorities of Hong Kong and Singapore, which both participate in the CPSS meetings. The workshop could thus benefit from this particular regional focus.

The workshop proved to be extremely useful for the exchange of information on current developments, in particular those aimed at reducing risks in payment and settlement systems. The participants gained a wealth of insight from this meeting.

The workshop concentrated on the following main topics:

  • the Core Principles for systemically important payment systems, which are of particular interest in Latin America and the Caribbean, where most countries are reforming their payment systems and the related infrastructure;
  • the recent joint CPSS/IOSCO initiative to draft recommendations for securities settlement systems, which is of interest to Latin America and the Caribbean;
  • retail payment systems, which are of interest due to ongoing reforms in check clearing processes and discussions on which retail payment instruments are most appropriate and efficient;
  • large-value payment systems in general, which are of interest because the recent or planned introduction in many countries in the region of RTGS (real-time gross settlement) systems, closely linked to the country's central bank, raises very specific questions as to the most efficient operation and oversight of such systems.

CPSS publications are available free of charge either as hard copy or via the BIS website at http://www.bis.org.