News

The AMF extended a new Compensatory Loan to the Kingdom of Morocco, with the amount of Arab Accounting Dinar 41.125 million, the equivalent of approximately USD 166 million. The agreement was signed on Wednesday, January 11, 2023, by HE Nadia Fettah, Minister of Economy and Finance, on behalf of the Kingdom of Morocco, and HE Dr. Abdulrahman A. Al Hamidy, Director General Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the AMF, on behalf of the AMF, with the aim to provide financial support to strengthen the country’s financial position and meet emergency needs. The loan was disbursed on Thursday, February 2, 2023

Abu Dhabi, January 19^th, 2023: Buna (the cross-border payment system operated by Arab Regional Payments Clearing and Settlement Organization “ARPCSO”, owned by The Arab Monetary Fund “AMF”), holds today, Thursday January 19^th, its monthly virtual workshop number 39 to showcase Buna’s contribution to regional economic integration and detail the mechanisms put in place by the central banks to ensure the safety and resiliency of the service.

In line with its continuous efforts to support the decision-making process in the Arab countries, the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) has released a study titled “Is Climate FinTech Effective in Mitigating Climate Change Risk?”.

Global climate change and global warming are typically attributed to human activity, especially after the industrial revolution. There is a growing consensus among climate scientists that Climate FinTech provides great potential to protect the environment and mitigate climate change risks. In this paper, we investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between the FinTech index and carbon dioxide emissions index globally. In doing so, Granger causality test and Wavelet coherence analysis are employed to evaluate this association using daily frequency data over a period of 30 June 2015 to 31 December 2021.

The Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) and The Arab Gulf Programme for Development (AGFUND) signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, December 28, to promote economic development and achieve sustainable development goals in the Arab region through boosting financial inclusion and enhancing the role of the financial inclusion. The MOU will focus on supporting micro, small and medium-sized agricultural projects, and digital financial transformation, which contributes to accelerating the economic growth and creating job opportunities in the region, in addition to supporting legislations and supervisions of the financial systems including microfinance. 

The Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) issued today Monday, December 19^th, 2022, a guidance note on “Adopting Smart Contracts and their Legal Enforceability in Arab Countries” prepared by members of the Arab Regional Fintech Working Group (WG), of which the AMF acts as the technical secretariat. This note stems from the AMF's endeavours to promote awareness of the opportunities and risks of adopting smart contracts in various industries in the Arab countries.

Abu Dhabi, December 8th, 2022: In a ceremony hosted by the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), Mr. Abdulwahed AlJanahi,  Chief Executive of BENEFIT, the operator of the national electronic payment systems in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and Mr. Mehdi Manaa, Chief Executive Officer of Buna, the cross-border payment system operated by Arab Regional Payments Clearing and Settlement Organization “ARPCSO”, owned by AMF,  signed today a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a framework of cooperation between Buna and BENEFIT.  The ceremony was held under the patronage of H.E Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj, Governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain, and H.E Dr. Abdulrahman Bin Abdullah Al Hamidy, Chairman of the Board of ARPCSO.

The Central Bank of Iraq, the Central Bank of Jordan, the Central Bank of Egypt, and Buna, the cross-border payment system operated by Arab Regional Payments Clearing and Settlement Organization “ARPCSO”, owned by the Arab Monetary Fund, announced a joint Arab initiative to launch cross-border payment service for pensioners in the Arab world utilizing the Buna system.

Abu Dhabi, December 7^th, 2022: Buna (the cross-border payment system operated by Arab Regional Payments Clearing and Settlement Organization “ARPCSO”, owned by The Arab Monetary Fund “AMF”), holds on Thursday December 8^th its monthly workshop number 38 to share updates on its strategic initiatives and other key industry developments.

The workshop will be hosting high-level guest speakers from various organizations, it will be the occasion to announce another key step and strategic partnership supporting Buna’s efforts towards building the instant payment hub for the Arab world and beyond.

The workshop will also host Bank of New York Mellon to shed light on the state of real-time payments in the US and other markets.

The program covers the period (2022-2025), and aims at establishing economic and financial stability in the Republic of Yemen, enhancing fiscal stability and the external position, rebuilding Yemeni institutions and supporting their governance and transparency, in order to enhance the macroeconomic environment to expand and diversify the productive base, support inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and create job opportunities. The program is expected to help put the Yemeni economy on a sustainable path, and support the course of economic and social development, while reducing unemployment and poverty rates.

The AMF follows closely the developments of the Tunisian economy and the challenges it faces due to the current global circumstances and works through a fruitful partnership with the Tunisian government to help the country address the different challenges in the most effective way, as the Tunisian economy witnessed positive developments during 2022, recording actual growth rates of about 2.4 percent and 2.8 percent for the first and second quarters of the aforementioned year, respectively, driven by the recovery of the agricultural sector,  increased phosphate production, the growth of the manufacturing sector, especially the textiles, clothing and leather industries, and improvement in tourism revenues and remittances of the Tunisians expatriates.