February 19 to 23, 2024

From February 19 to 23, 2024, 30 participants, including 14 from the People’s Bank of China (PBC) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOF) and 16 from the central banks of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, gathered in Shenzhen for the course on “Central Bank Digital Currencies: Principles and Policy Considerations”.

With support from the South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre (The SEACEN Centre), this course aims to strengthen the institutional capacity and cooperation between central banks and relevant authorities in the South, Southeast, and East Asian regions.

The course, presented by the IMF Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) and led by Mr. Rasool Zandvakil, Ms. Boriana Yontcheva, and Mr. Maximilian Fandl, discussed the different forms of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the benefits, costs and risks related to CBDCs, their implications for financial stability and bank intermediation, monetary policy transmission, financial integrity and financial inclusion, as well as regulatory considerations for CBDCs both at the national and international levels.

As an effort to reflect on, and discuss, country experiences of CBDC strategies, the course also invited two guest lecturers, Ms. Ayse Sungur, Senior Financial Market Infrastructure Expert of The SEACEN Centre, and Ms. Lyu Yuan (virtual presence), Director of Innovation Division of the Digital Currency Institute of PBC, who shared on the CBDC development among SEACEN members and in China, respectively.

The course also offered the opportunity to gain insights into CBDC adoption from the perspective of users and FinTech service platforms through field visit to Tencent and interaction with Tencent’s team involved in digital currency research and product development. The field visit was well-received by the course participants in terms of usefulness and effectiveness.

Field visit to Tencent and roundtable discussion with team on CBDC implementation on digital platforms