Petar Goshev: Opening of the Joint Public Information Center of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia and the World Bank Address by Mr Petar Goshev, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the opening of the Joint Public Information Center of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia (NBRM) and the World Bank, Skopje, 16 December 2010. * * * Dear Ms. Lilia Burunchuk, Director of the World Bank Office in Skopje, Dear Mr. Alexander Tieman, IMF Resident Representative for the Republic of Macedonia, Your Excellencies, Dear guests, Dear ladies and gentlemen! Please allow me to greet you and express my pleasure that today we have the opportunity to attend two important events. The first, which we will gladly enjoy for a longer period of time – the official opening of the Joint Public Information Center of the NBRM and the World Bank. And the second, the presentation of the Annual Regional Report of the IMF, an event which is always extremely interesting because it is an analysis made by a highcaliber institution, such as the IMF. Dear guests, The partnership of the Republic of Macedonia and the World Bank lasts for nearly two decades. Good results of this partnership are evident. The partnership by definition rests on the benefit for both parties, i.e. for all who gathered together in achieving a goal. I do not know which of the two sides, benefited more from the cooperation between the World Bank and the Republic of Macedonia. But I strongly believe that the cooperation with the World Bank has played (and still plays) very important financial and advisory role in strengthening the institutional capacities of our country and in boosting the economic development. The amount of capital invested by this institution in the Republic of Macedonia is known, in the years when it was most important to us, when our access to other sources of funds was incredibly difficult and much more expensive. Reforms that were and still are implemented in our country with the assistance of the World Bank are well known: the judiciary, health care, tax system, pension system, decentralization, increasing competitiveness, etc. The positive role of the World Bank in the issues that are extremely important for us is clear, and we call it by the common name – structural reforms, a set of issues without whose advancement we would not have approached the doors of the Euro-Atlantic integrated systems. I think that for that contribution, i.e. the result of our partnership with the World Bank we should use every opportunity to say thank you. Working together on the structural reforms, many of our institutions, members of the administration, and even politicians became acquainted with the best practices in the world in many important areas of the economy, and in general the organization of work, important for improving the quality of life. In fact, the World Bank has always emphasized the importance of knowledge, the necessity of continuous training – a key part of the educated workforce for creating jobs and economic growth. An additional argument are the targeted investments aimed at improving the quality of the educational process in the Republic of Macedonia and taking actions to facilitate the access of Macedonian citizens to the best global expertise. The importance of investment in human capital, as economists say, or in the so-called social capital, according to sociologists, is unquestionable. Within that platform, within the slogan – learn continuously to progress continuously, the cooperation between the National Bank and the World Bank has produced a nice event, a good product: logistical support for the process of increasing the knowledge. This logistical support is called: Joint Public Information Center of the NBRM and the World Bank. Today, we are practically announcing its official opening. Its primary function is to promote awareness of the Macedonian public about the work of the World Bank, through the dissemination of information and documentation of the Bank, and to provide access for the Macedonian citizens to extensive collection of contemporary professional literature. In fact, this center is another public information service of the World Bank in Macedonia, along the Depository Library, which operates within the Faculty of Economics, “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje. Located within the NBRM Library, the Center provides access to over 400 publications of the World Bank, electronic access to the World Bank databases, as well as a specifically authorized direct access to the electronic World Bank library, with a possibility to browse over 6,000 copies of professional literature. What makes this Center additionally useful for the public is that, within the cooperation with NBRM, it simultaneously provides the external users with an access also to the National Bank publications, in the form of annual reports and working papers, and to the professional literature that the NBRM Library has at its disposal. The access to all publications, as well as to the World Bank statistical database is open for all interested users in the Republic of Macedonia, because of which this Center can bear the epithet of a rich trove of knowledge, which is waiting to be used. Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, We live in an era of extraordinary dynamic changes. An era, where the already learned things outdate in no time, or become insufficient, while the crisis once again showed that the enigmas are far more numerous than the axiomatic truths. That is the reason that the investments in learning should be ongoing. As a Central Bank, we make constant efforts for knowledge improvement and elevation of the scientific and research capacity, not only within the Bank, but wider, as well. Therefore, in the previous years, we have organized numerous work-shops on many current topics, international conferences, and our employees lecture in several faculties in the country. Also, four years ago, we introduced the Annual Reward for Young Researchers, which has proved to be a very successful example, followed by other institutions, as well. Today’s opening of the Joint Public Information Centre is another contribution to the upgrade of the scientific and research profile of the Central Bank, which has been established and developed very hard all these years, in parallel with the operational portfolio of the basic functions of NBRM: determining and implementation of the monetary policy, the banking sector supervision, the financial stability support, ensuring smooth functioning of the payment system, and above all, realization of the ultimate objective of the NBRM’s monetary policy – the price stability. I believe that with the opening of this Center, we open another channel for knowledge dissemination, which will be additional stimulus for the scientific and research activity. I believe that the Center will also serve for further deepening of the NBRM and World Bank cooperation, inter alia, also in the domain of organization of forums and debates on various current topics, as well as in the providing of foreign expertise, comparing the domestic with the international experience. Dear friends, We are glad that this library will join the libraries the American journalist Carl T. Rowan calls “knowledge food”, saying also that “the knowledge has liberated much more people than any war made in the entire history”. We are pleased that also with this Library, we enable a lot of people, either younger or elderly, to give one of the most beautiful gifts – the book, for which the writer Garrison Keillor says that “it is the only gift you can constantly open, again and again”. We are glad that we are opening another such possibility. I sincerely hope that the opening of this Library will be welcomed by the scholars and wider public in the Republic of Macedonia. Thank you!