22 avril 2022
The IMF considers the multitude of central bank digital currency projects to be a risk. According to its experts, international regulation is necessary. This proposal may not find much support.
Experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently defended the idea of creating an international body for the regulation of central bank digital currencies (CBDC), we learn from the transcript of an exchange with journalists. "We need to create a global payment system that works between countries and where CBDCs, central bank digital currencies are interoperable between countries," said Tobias Adrian, Advisor and Director of the Currencies and Capital Markets Department at of the institution.
In the opinion of this expert, digital central bank currencies can work together, and it would take global cooperation to set up these payment systems. His opinion was given while we were discussing the new risks to be taken into account in the regulation of the monetary sector.
This contribution comes in line with the IMF's concerns in terms of international financial stability, but it also comes as some African countries have already issued their digital currencies (e-naira in Nigeria) and others have launched a reflection to learn more about the implications of such a currency (Kenya). Other digital currency projects have not prospered, as is the case in Tunisia and Senegal, with the Regional Bank of Markets.
The difference between CBDCs and cryptocurrencies in the strict sense is that the former are guaranteed by an official regulator, while the latter are managed by a virtual Blockchain system. But for many African countries, the adoption of digital currencies would at least have the advantage of allowing easier creation and circulation of money, increasing financial inclusion, and reducing monetary exclusion.
Some analysts of the African economy, such as the Cameroonian statistician Dieudonné Essomba, have often thought that the issuance of non-transferable and inconvertible parallel currencies would be a concrete opportunity to find alternative means of financing economies whose currencies have a fixed parity such as the CFA franc. This reflection suggests that the CBDCs would be in this context a starting point for the binarization of means of payment in the region, and for a revival of the financing of the economies.
On the other hand, it is not certain that low-income countries adhere to a system of global regulation of digital currencies. The current mechanisms under the leadership of the IMF have not always been to their advantage, especially since their voting rights within the institution are weak. The movement of digital currencies was precisely born of a desire to overcome the monetary exclusion imposed by the current financial system on hundreds of millions of people.
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