The expenses in the Eesti Pank budget will increase by 4.8% next year to 32.1 million euros. Without cash handling costs, contributions for joint IT projects shared between the central banks of the European Union, and the cost of services provided to Finantsinspektsioon, which vary a lot from year to year, the expenditures in the budget will be 27.5 million euros, which is 2.2% more than in 2024.
The revenues of Eesti Pank are forecast to exceed its expenses in 2025. The initial data indicate that the revenues of the central bank were substantially larger than its expenses in 2024. The final financial results of Eesti Pank for 2024 will be established in spring 2025.
The core activities of the central bank include ensuring cash circulation and payments, analysing the economy and the financial sector, and compiling statistics on the financial sector. Key issues for the central bank in 2025 besides its core activities will be readiness for various crisis scenarios including cyber security, and reducing the central bank’s environmental footprint.
Eesti Pank will invest 5.3 million euros in fixed assets in 2025. The largest part of the investment will again go to development work on ATLAS, the new data processing and analysis system for statistics, which started in 2023. ATLAS will allow statistics to be compiled in a more efficient and integrated way, raising the quality of the output.
Eesti Pank is planning to order additional 20-euro banknotes in 2025, and to make the preparations needed for issuing various collector coins in 2025 and 2026.
The biggest real estate investment in the buildings of the central bank will be in the building at Sakala 6, where repair work is needed. A rebuilding programme for the central bank museum is also planned that will see a redesign of the permanent exhibition and the space for press conferences and presentations.
Eesti Pank will have full-time equivalent positions for 248.2 people next year, which is 6.9 more than in 2024. Of those, 3.5 positions will be temporary as information needs to be passed on to incoming employees because the specific nature of the work means that it is not possible to find people with the relevant experience directly from the labour market, and new staff will need to be trained to replace long-serving staff who are retiring. The personnel costs of Eesti Pank will rise by 7.4% in 2025 to 16.8 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 and Harjumaa, which is where the central bank mainly competes for employees.
Eesti Pank is separated from the state budget and state funds in order to guarantee its independence in combating inflation. This means that Eesti Pank is not in any way answerable for the financial liabilities of the state, and the state has no responsibility for Eesti Pank’s financial liabilities. Eesti Pank earns its revenues from the single monetary policy transactions of the euro area and from investing the central bank’s own reserves. Eesti Pank has however channelled a part of its profits to the Estonian state budget in most years. Since 1992 Eesti Pank has allocated a total of 177 million euros from its profit to the state budget.
Source: eestipank.ee