Republic of Uzbekistan: Technical Assistance Report-Macro Stress Testing of the Uzbek Banking Sector

The Technical Assistance (TA) mission, conducted in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from August 21 to 31, 2023, assisted the Central Bank of Uzbekistan’s (CBU) authorities in developing their stress testing (ST) framework for the banking sector. This TA was the second of a multi-mission TA project following on the recommendations of the 2020 Financial Sector Stability Review (FSSR). This mission duly assessed the progress on the implementation of the previous mission (2022) that had introduced a multi-horizon ST tool based on explicit macroeconomic scenarios along with a credit risk satellite model. The purpose of this mission was to build on the earlier work and further strengthen the capacity of the Financial Stability Department (FSD) staff to carry out stress tests and thus assess the resilience of the Uzbek banking system. The high-level objectives of the mission encompassed improving performance of the credit risk and profit & loss satellite models, providing training on ST scenario design with working procedures for cross-departmental collaboration, and setting up guidelines to operate, maintain and improve the ST toolkit and communicate the results with senior management and general public.