STOCKHOLM/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – The Swedish central bank on Tuesday said it had submitted a proposal to Sweden’s parliament to restore equity to the statutory base level, which will require a capital injection of 43.7 billion Swedish crowns ($4.05 billion) this year.
“A negative equity does not affect the Riksbank’s ability to conduct monetary policy in the short term,” Governor Erik Thedeen said in a statement.
“But to maintain confidence in an independent monetary policy in the long term, it is necessary that the Riksbank is financially independent,” he added.
In 2022, the Riksbank made a loss of around 80 billion crowns, resulting in negative equity of 18 billion crowns, because of a sharp increase in interest rates which led to a fall in the value of bonds bought by the bank between 2015 and 2021.
New legislation introduced in 2023 says the Riksbank’s equity should have a target equity level of 60 billion crowns, and a basic level of around 40 billion.
The Riksbank said its equity at the end of 2023 was around minus 2 billion crowns.
($1 = 10.7796 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Niklas Pollard and Christian Schmollinger)
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