The expenses in the Eesti Pank budget will increase by 8.8% next year to 28.5 million euros. Without cash handling costs, which vary a lot from year to year, the expenditures in the budget will be 26.3 million euros, which is 3 million euros or 12.7% larger than in 2022.

General high inflation has raised sharply the expenditures in the central bank budget on various services that are bought in. Without the costs of cash handling services, the budget for services will increase by 14.6% to 8.5 million euros.

Eesti Pank is planning to order additional 50-euro banknotes in 2023, and to mint two-euro coins with a special design dedicated to the national bird, the barn swallow. The central bank is also minting gold and silver collector coins for Hanseatic Tartu, and silver collector coins dedicated to the Estonian farming couple and the statesmen Konstantin Konik and Konstantin Päts.

Key issues for the central bank in 2023 besides its core activities will again centre around cyber security, readiness for various crisis scenarios, and efforts to reduce energy costs. As a member of the European System of Central Banks Eesti Pank will continue its internal development work next year for the integration of the Trans-European TARGET express transfer system and the T2S common platform for security settlements, and for the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) project. Participation in the pan-European digital euro research project is also a priority, and the results of it are expected next autumn.

Eesti Pank will invest a little over 4 million euros in fixed assets in 2023. Renovation of the ventilation system in the buildings of Eesti Pank will start so that the central bank can keep better control of its rising energy and heating costs, and the bank will research ways to increase energy saving in its buildings and will look at installing solar panels. The old banking operations hall at Estonia pst 13 will be reconstructed to create additional working rooms for Finantsinspektsioon.

Income for Eesti Pank next year is forecast at 87.7 million euros. The central bank mainly earns its income from the common monetary policy transactions of the euro area central banks, reserve management, and sales of collector coins. Eesti Pank is using the buffers, or risk provisions, built up in earlier years to cover the negative results of its investment activities in 2022, which have come mainly from the impact of the sharp rise in interest rates on the bond portfolio of the central bank. It consequently plans to use the expected positive result in 2023 to rebuild those buffers. The audited financial results of Eesti Pank for 2022 will be confirmed in March 2023.

Eesti Pank will have 241.1 full-time equivalent positions for employees next year, which is 2.8 more than this year. Personnel costs will increase over the year by 11.7% to 14.3 million euros. Eesti Pank aims to keep the salaries of its employees at roughly the same level as those for similar positions in the financial sector in Tallinn, which is where the central bank mainly competes in the labour market.

Additional information:
Viljar Rääsk
Head of Communications
Eesti Pank
6680 745, 5275 055
Email: [email protected]
Press enquiries: [email protected]