YEREVAN, APRIL 7, NOYAN TAPAN. The transparency of the work of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) is fully in line with 73 out of the 77 standards established by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). the chairman of the CBA Tigran Sargsian stated on April 7 when presenting the booklet "The Correspondence of Transparency of the CBA to the World Standard". In the words of Margarita Mamikonian, marcoeconomist of the external economic relations unit of the CBA monetary and credit policy department, transparency of the CBA's work is partly in line with the standard envisaging that "the public shall be informed about the amounts and terms of credits, advance payments and overdrafts provided to the government by the CBA, as well as about the government's deposits with the CBA". The partial discrepancy here is conditioned by the RA Law on Bank Secrecy, according to which, only the customer, in the given case - the Armenian government, may publish information on deposits. M. Mamikonian said that another three standards are not applicable by the CBA. Two of them are related to publication of information about relations between the CBA as the supervisory body and the Armenian Stock Exchange and the Central Depository of Armenia as self-regulatory bodies. These bodies have been transformed from self-regulatory into commercial organizations with status of an open joint-stock company. Besides, the standard, by which "the public shall be informed about legal protection of officials and employees of a financial agency during the performance of work duties", is not applicable either. It is not applicable for the reason that the norms of legal protection of the indicated employees have not yet been defined legislatively in Armenia. According to T. Sargsian, since the early 1990s when the central banks shifted to the inflation targeting policy, importance has been attached to development of standards of transparency of the central banks' activities. With the use of the inflation targeting policy, special importance has been attached to development of those transparenct standards that make the practice of the central banks understandable and predictable to the public. The CBA started the introduction of these standards in 1998. The transparency standards of the CBA work cover the sectors of the monetary and credit policy and the financial policy.

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