The Board of Latvijas Banka has approved Latvijas Banka's financial statements for 2019. According to the statements, Latvijas Banka's profit for the year 2019 totalled 27.2 million euro, representing a 86% increase in comparison with 2018.
Pursuant to the Law on Latvijas Banka, Latvijas Banka's annual financial statements are audited by independent external auditors recommended by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank and approved by the Council of the European Union. Latvijas Banka has received a positive auditor opinion on its financial statements for 2019 from the auditing company KPMG Baltics AS (formerly, KPMG Baltics SIA).
Pursuant to the Law on Latvijas Banka, 70% or 19 million euro of Latvijas Banka's profit for 2019 will be appropriated to the central government budget; the rest of the profit will be transferred to the reserve capital of Latvijas Banka.
Since the euro changeover in 2014, the aggregate profit of Latvijas Banka has reached 144 million euro, of which 96 million euro have been contributed to the central government revenue.
Latvijas Banka continued with the implementation of several projects of high public importance in 2019. In the field of payments, new credit institutions from across the Baltics became participants of Latvijas Banka's electronic clearing system (EKS) last year. The total volume of payments handled by the EKS grew by 70% in 2019. This included 6.4 million instant payments worth 1.2 billion euro as compared to 2.4 million instant payments totalling 494 million euro in 2018. Within the framework of further improvement of the instant payment infrastructure, an international scale Proxy Register "Instant Links" developed by Latvijas Banka became operational in 2019, enabling payments based on payee's phone number only.
Several working and discussion papers on topical economic subjects, including labour reserves and local government spending, were published by Latvijas Banka in 2019.
Latvijas Banka continued with the development and modernisation of its Credit Register in 2019, inter alia enabling the receipt of information from the Register also via smart devices. Latvijas Banka initiated a discussion about rounding up invoice amounts with professional cash handlers, thereby limiting the costs and environmental impact associated with the use of 1 and 2 cent coins, as well as implemented other significant measures (see the attached infographics)
