Central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) failed to secure a third consecutive top grade from the New York-based Global Finance magazine on Wednesday.
The magazine’s “Central Banker Report Cards 2021” gave Yang an “A-” grade, stopping a two-year streak of the top “A” grade in 2019 and last year after he took the position on Feb. 26, 2018.
The magazine said its “A” to “F grading is based on success in areas such as inflation control, economic growth goals, currency stability and interest rate management.
The magazine said that “A” represents an excellent performance, while “F” is for outright failure.
Yang was ranked on the same level as US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this year, the report showed.
Aside from Yang and Powell, Colombia’s Leonardo Villar Gomez, Georgia’s Koba Gvenetadze, Israel’s Amir Yaron, Malaysia’s Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus, Mexico’s Alejandro Diaz de Leon, New Zealand’s Adrian Orr, Paraguay’s Jose Cantero Sienra, Qatar’s Abdulla Bin Saoud Al Thani and South Africa’s Lesetja Kganyago also earned an “A-.”
Ranked above those 11 were 10 other central bankers who earned the top “A” grade, Global Finance said.
They are Brazil’s Roberto Campos Neto, Bulgaria’s Dimitar Radev, Canada’s Tiff Macklem, Chile’s Mario Marcel Cullell, China’s Yi Gang (易綱), the Czech Republic’s Jiri Rusnok, Egypt’s Tarek Amer, the EU’s Christine Lagarde, Kuwait’s Mohammad Yousef Al-Hashel and Morocco’s Abdellatif Jouahr.
The Central Banker Report Cards, published every year by Global Finance since 1994, graded the central bank governors of more than 100 countries and territories this year.
“With the [COVID-19] pandemic still surging in many areas, and inflation emerging as a major area of concern once again, the world’s central bankers are confronting multiple challenges from multiple directions,” Global Finance publisher and editorial director Joseph Giarraputo said in a statement.
“Global Finance’s annual Central Banker Report Cards show which financial policy leaders are succeeding in the face of adversity and which are falling behind,” Giarraputo added.
Yang has been working at Taiwan’s central bank since 1989, serving in its foreign exchange and economic research departments before his appointment as deputy governor in 2008.
His predecessor, Perng Fai-nan (彭懷南), has the distinction of being the only central banker in the world to have earned the top grade 14 times, gaining straight A’s from 2005 to 2017.
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