samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Hong Kong as an Ideal Platform to Go into Mainland China 6. The Mainland of China is home to the second largest stock market and bond market in the world. While Mainland China’s capital markets have long been rather difficult to access, this paradigm is gradually changing. 7. In the old days everyone had to go through the different programmes of QFII, RQFII, CIBM direct, with all the associated processes of applying for quotas, signing up new service providers and counterparties, setting up new trading system, conforming to onshore rules, 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  etc. But the introduction of Stock Connect in 2014 and Bond Connect in 2017 are gamechangers for a lot of international investors. 8. While the pre-existing access channels still cater for some investors like ourselves who have already set up all the systems, the Connect schemes enable all international investors to implement and manage their Chinese investments much more easily based on familiar international rules and practices. They can continue to leverage their existing systems and global partners, such as brokers, custodians and banks without the need to engage onshore service providers. For example, Mainland China is one of the very few markets that require direct holding of securities. But Bond Connect makes nominee holding possible to foreign investors. This drastically reduces the complexities for them to settle trades and manage assets. 9. The Connect schemes are fast gaining popularity among offshore investors.

Up to September, Stock Connect captured over 65% of foreign holdings of A-shares; its Northbound daily average turnover doubled year-on-year to RMB42 billion for the first nine months of this year. In just two years’ time, Bond Connect has also quickly gained traction. It now has over 1,300 investors from 31 jurisdictions, and 61 of the top 100 global asset managers. In the first ten months of the year, it contributed to around 40% of the increase in foreign holdings of onshore bonds; its daily turnover increased 2.7 times year-on-year, and now accounts for more than 60% of the overall trading turnover by foreign investors. 10. And like other things we do, we build on the good start and keep working to make the Connect schemes more attractive to international investors. We introduced in June a new arrangement that will enable investors to obtain and hedge in CNY for the Stock Connect. For Bond Connect, we have expanded the settlement cycle, introduced DvP settlement and block trade functionality, and added an additional electronic trading platform. We continuously listen to market participants, and are exploring further enhancements such as expansion of tradable product scope under Bond Connect and launch of its Southbound leg. Huge Inflow into Mainland China’s capital markets 11. Given the much greater ease of investing in the capital markets in the Mainland of China, foreign holdings of A-shares and onshore bonds increased rapidly by 73% and 93% respectively in the past 2 years.
The wider the fans, the more uncertain the forecasts are. If economic developments are broadly in line with projections, economic agents can also expect interest rate developments to be approximately as projected. On the other hand, the interest rate path may shift in relation to the current path if economic prospects change or if the effects of interest rate changes on output, employment and prices are different from those projected. Thank you for your attention. 4  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  5  6  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  7  8  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  9  10  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  11  12  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  13  14  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  15  16  BIS Review 34/2007  BIS Review 34/2007  17

This is a challenge that calls for the involvement of all levels of government. From this standpoint, it is very important to adapt the analysis of public finances and its economic policy implications to the current Spanish situation, marked by highly decentralised public spending. Leaving aside the transfers between different tiers of  BIS Review 117/2006  5  government and interest payments, which reflect past financing patterns, the volume of spending by territorial governments is almost two and a half times that within the State sphere. Such a figure shows the enormous increase in the role of these agents, which has significant consequences for budgetary policy conduct, both in terms of its contribution to macroeconomic equilibrium and as regards its influence on the economy’s growth capacity in the medium and long run. From the standpoint of the contribution to macroeconomic equilibrium, the initial data on the regional governments' budgets for 2007 point to a balanced budget target for the year. We might wonder, however, whether the macroeconomic situation I have described, at a cyclical juncture marked by a prolonged expansion, would require the setting of somewhat more ambitious targets, in line with the spirit of the new Budgetary Stability legislation, even though these are only legally binding as from the 2008 budget. Also, from the standpoint of their contribution to long-term growth, the role of the territorial governments in managing the public spending items of most relevance for improving the Spanish economy's competitiveness acquires considerable importance.
These should support at least four key objectives, to enhance access to insurance; increase efficiencies in claims processing; promote fair competition and provide additional choice for consumers as well as provide a strong mechanism to prevent frauds and 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  cheats. This is important not only to deliver a superior customer experience, but also to control leakages, manage costs and ensure sustainability over a long term. It will also position the industry to compete and position itself more effectively as we move forward as the disruptive forces of competition, including from non-traditional players, continue to gain traction. It will also prevent leakages arising from abuses, misrepresentation and fraudulent claims. In the immediate term, the industry needs to set its sights on creating a convenient and seamless first-loss-notification process that leverages on shared infrastructure. Such a process should eliminate intermediate processes that are currently adding costs and enabling abuse and fraud to take place. Certain infrastructure should not be considered as a competitive edge. We have raised this issue many times. Sharing infrastructure and information among industry players is very important, but efforts towards this have been quite disappointing. The establishment of the ISM Fraud Intelligence System marks a significant first step in this direction. Deploying the latest data analytics and network analyses, the Fraud Intelligence System is a milestone in the industry’s efforts to combat fraud, especially in the motor business.

In terms of the migration to e-payments, the insurance and takaful sector is a key sector where the usage of cheques is still prevalent. In 2016, 2.3 million cheques were issued by insurance and takaful companies while 9.8 million cheques were collected by such companies from their customers. While good progress has been made this year with the decline in cheque collection accelerating from -0.5% in 2016 to -22.1% in the first 7 months of 2017, more effective and creative measures are needed to drive cheque usage to negligible levels. To this end, Bank Negara Malaysia has recently concluded a consultation exercise with the industry on the implementation of an ePayment Incentive Fund Framework (ePIF). Under the framework, insurance companies shall set aside RM3 for every cheque issued and RM1 for every cheque collected to be used as incentives to encourage their customers, agents, service providers and government agencies to migrate to e-payments. The current practice where agents collect premiums from customers in cash and make payment to insurance and takaful companies using the agencies’ own cheques or credit cards should stop. The industry should promote greater prudence and transparency in the collection of customer premiums by facilitating customers to make direct payments to the insurance and takaful companies. To this end, the industry equipping agents with mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) or mobile apps to collect payment directly from customers should be the norm. Thirdly, the industry needs to collaborate and invest in key market infrastructure and arrangements.
Nonetheless, competitiveness indicators for the Albanian economy reveal that there is a lot more to be done in this regard, to face competition both in the region and globally. The Bank of Albania is committed to maintaining monetary and financial stability through: a) A prudent monetary policy. We have ensured price stability, complied with the inflation target and anchored long-term expectations of the economy. This move has increased the space for harmonising better the short-term stimulation with the long-term stability of the economy. In response to shocks, we have progressively eased the monetary policy since 2009. This approach has brought the key interest rates to their record low to boost consumption and investments. The depreciation of the nominal and real exchange rate has provided another incentive for the Albanian economy, encouraging exports and discouraging imports. We have continuously adjusted our monetary operations to guarantee an increasing supply of liquidity against an expanded collateral base with longer maturity terms. Given the current situation of the Albanian economy, we believe that macroeconomic policies should continue to be stimulating even in the future. The need for stimulating economic policies is conditioned first by the fact that the Albanian economy is operating below its potential, as the demand may not guarantee a complete utilisation of capacities. Second, it is enabled by short and medium-term controlled risks to economic stability. In the context of harmonisation of fiscal and monetary policies, the Bank of Albania has supported the increasing orientation of the fiscal policy towards debt consolidation.

Therefore, I would like to invite all other stakeholders to be open-minded and very cooperative to boost lending to the economy. First, I would suggest to the business community to be more creative, transparent and formal in its operation. It should comply with all obligations arising from the contractual relations with the banking system. This should be broadly understood and accepted. A correction is necessary in the economy, first of all implying a rebalancing of prices. There may be no reduction in non-performing loans, increase in lending to the economy, improvement in business and bank balance sheets, unless collaterals are executed and, subsequently, fix asset prices are corrected. This process would release huge financial resources that would be a vital serum of fresh money injected back into the economy. With this fresh money we must encourage the creation of new and effective initiatives that yield swift return on investment. One of the lessons learned from the crisis is that any new healthy money should go to a healthy business initiative. We need to encourage highly productive sectors of the economy. This is the only way to ensure revitalisation of the economy and make it a dignified European partner. Second, I would like to encourage the banking system to be more dynamic, by looking continuously for worth-funding opportunities. Offer reliable funding packages by assigning priority to economic health of the country, which would, in turn, guarantee the long-term success of your business.
In Turkey the figure is 52 percent, and is slowly but steadily declining. If we look at the concentration issue from another standpoint, using the data for November 1998 and taking into account the total assets of the sector, 65 percent of the Turkish banking system belongs to the top 10 major banks. If we include the 20 foreign banks and branches having a share of 6 percent, and the 14 development and investment banks having a share of 5 percent, it can be seen that 76 percent of the banking system is consistent with 10 big banks, foreign and investment banks. The remaining 24 percent of the sector belongs to 30 banks. Among these banks, there are banks that are leaders in the sector, functioning properly and effectively. However, a limited number of banks have practical problems which are well  BIS Review 31/1999  2  known to us. We know all their problems. We monitor them. The existing banking laws and other elements of the legal framework do not give us full authority to address them actively and efficiently. The problem of the state owned banks is occasioned by the state budget, and its solution involves different issues. Now let me talk about risk management in the Turkish banking sector. From the standpoint of risk management, we do have well-developed methods of risk management and for supervising the risks that we undertake.

But as I mentioned earlier in connection with the need for additional principles to preserve the soundness of the system, the rapid changes of recent years, their consequences and events occurring in the international environment have underlined the importance of effective supervision. In 1997, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) enumerated the 25 Core Principles to be used for banking supervision. The need for such principals was well understood after the financial crises in Asia and Russia. I may say that, during these events, which have been going on for several years, the majority of the Turkish banking system has gained great advantages from adopting these changes. These banks have succeeded in keeping pace with the era, especially with respect to technological innovations, strategies for risk-taking and management techniques. Besides these advances, there were some factors that damaged the system. These are: 1) High inflation. 2) High public sector borrowing requirement. 3) The lack of an efficient legal framework. In addition, the style of banks’ operations and strategies are somewhat different in a high inflation, as opposed to a normal, environment. On the one hand, banks try to sidestep the harmful effects of inflation. On the other hand, they revise their methods of overcoming uncertainty and taking risks. And more important, as the public persists in continuing to borrow, which leads eventually to crowding-out, the banks turn to the public sector as a simple method of investment.
The real challenge – on a global scale – is to rebalance the world economy so that very low interest rates are not required to exhort deficit countries to spend in order to absorb the surpluses elsewhere. Monetary policy cannot provide the answer. It can only buy time to bring about the necessary structural changes in investment, trade and capital flows. Whether they involve changes in currency values or restructuring of debt is a political choice, but a failure to deal with global imbalances will not only retard the recovery in the world as a whole, but worsen the scale of the adjustment ultimately needed. It will inevitably be a bumpy ride. The other obstacle to a return to normality is our banking system where, despite the generous provision of liquidity and funding from the State, lending remains lacklustre, and risk premia high. Although the combined balance sheet of our largest banks has shrunk since the height of the crisis in 2008, it is still 400% of annual GDP. Leverage ratios have fallen, but all our major banks remain highly leveraged. And of course the two biggest lenders to the domestic economy remain largely in state ownership. It is difficult to imagine a banking sector like that making a real contribution to any economic recovery. It must be time for decisive action. Chancellor, you have made clear tonight that you embrace that view.

But monetary policy can not – and should not – seek to prevent those adjustments. They are necessary for the long-run stability of our economy. Rather the job of monetary policy – and of public policy more generally – is to ensure that these adjustments occur in an orderly manner and within an economic environment which is consistent with hitting the 2% inflation target. Because it is new and untested, there is understandably considerable nervousness about the Monetary Policy Committee’s asset purchase programme – a.k.a. quantitative easing. How is it supposed to work? Will it work? The essence of the asset purchase programme is to increase the supply of money and credit in the economy. An important point to stress is that the success of the programme does not depend on banks returning to a position in which they are able to lend normally. The policy works by supplying money directly into the economy, not through the banks. Much of the money is being injected by purchasing government bonds from institutional investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds. These purchases encourage investors to switch their portfolios away from gilts into corporate bonds and equities, so improving the supply of credit to businesses. Companies’ access to credit is further enhanced by the Bank’s purchases of commercial paper and corporate bonds, which improve the functioning of these markets. But is it working? The objective of the asset purchases is to increase the growth of nominal spending.
The fan chart is designed to strike the right balance between these two hazards, by giving a broad brush articulation of the distribution that the Committee judges appropriate. But there is always room for improvement. So we turn to some of the ideas we have considered for providing additional information on particular aspects of the distribution, to help deal with some of these difficulties. For example, the next chart shows how the distribution has changed since the previous forecast by placing the two distributions side by side, as in [Slide 15]. This chart shows that the most likely outcome in the dark red band has shifted down compared with the earlier forecast. But that change in the most likely outcome is not reflected to the same degree in the rest of the fan chart – and that is because there has been an offsetting upwards shift in the balance of risks. This is most clearly seen by noting how the dark line is flatter than the light one on the right hand side of the chart, and steeper than it is on the left. As we discussed earlier, the aim of MPC communication is to convey useful information about the broad distribution, without being driven to spurious accuracy. There are many ways we can do this. One idea that we are investigating is to show charts of the MPC’s view of the probability that inflation will be above the 2% target at a particular point in time. This is shown in [Slide 16].

I am sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you are going to enjoy and benefit from the quality, both in substance and in form, of the address that Governor Noyer is about to give. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1
Harmonised prices data do not exist over a longer time period, but available national figures point to the fact that differences are much smaller than they were in some other periods in the past. For example, in the early 1990s, the differences between the highest and lowest inflation rates were of the order of magnitude of over 10 percentage points. Thus, a more stable price environment in the euro area as a whole has also been accompanied by a considerable degree of narrowing in inflation rate differentials. The move to a single currency and the introduction of the euro are based on the success of this convergence process towards low inflation rates in all participating countries. It may be recalled that the achievement of a high degree of price stability is one of the convergence criteria established in the Treaty to be used to assess whether countries have fulfilled their obligations regarding participation in Monetary Union. However, this does not mean that after countries have joined the Monetary Union they will - at all times - have the same rate of inflation. To put the current differences in inflation in the euro area into context, it is useful to compare developments in the euro area with variations in inflation in the United States, a large single currency area which has been established for a long period of time and which is highly integrated in terms of labour and product markets.

This is as important for countries which are performing above the euro area average as for those whose economies are performing below the average. In circumstances where, for example, the economy is weaker than the euro area - and where monetary policy may be regarded as too tight - a high degree of flexibility is required in order to avoid significant increases in unemployment. Should, for example, the economy 3  BIS Review 123/1999  be growing strongly and unemployment be falling more rapidly than in the euro area, a more flexible labour market could help to contain the upward pressures on prices that could emerge sooner than in the euro area as a whole. The current recovery in the euro area provides a good opportunity to initiate new policies designed to improve the functioning of markets. The Netherlands has shown that this can bring about positive results. Although inactivity still remains high, the rate of unemployment is now one of the lowest in the euro area. It would be a good thing if the Netherlands could show that the dialectics of progress do not apply in this case. It is also necessary for fiscal policy to play its part. The Stability and Growth Pact is sometimes seen as constraining the role of fiscal authorities, but this is a misconception. The Pact is required in order to ensure that responsible fiscal policies are pursued by all participating Member States.
In that regard, there is now reasonable global consensus that the origin of the turmoil could be traced to excessive risk taking due to pure and simple greed; recklessness driven by intense, unadulterated greed; leading to the creation of massive “bubbles” in many developed economies, that were not supported by a robust, representative real asset base. No doubt, such risk taking had often been fuelled by lax and short-sighted regulation. To make matters worse, many rating agencies too, tacitly and indirectly, encouraged the excessive risk taking by assigning top ratings to toxic financial instruments, thereby helping to blow up the bubble even bigger. The bubble creating drivers had also been strongly supported by the global ability to transact business at unbelievable speeds and in mind-boggling volumes. This capacity provided the scope to move capital, wealth and resources across borders instantaneously, almost without restrictions or regulatory oversight, at the press of a button. But whatever may have been the drivers, the end result was that this greed and its ill-effects created and nurtured massive “bubbles” in many developed economies; and the subsequent puncturing of these massive bubbles has now revealed just how hollow and empty the financial structures that we relied upon, had been. However, even at that stage, the usually conservative multi-lateral “watchdogs”, rating agencies and experienced academics could not realize, let alone predict, that the world’s financial system was fast reaching breaking point!

I would also like to thank the Co-lead Managers, DZ BANK AG, Hong Kong Branch, ICBC (Asia) and BMO Capital Markets Corp and Co-Managers, ANZ Investment Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for managing and distributing the issue. I look forward to your continuing support of our Corporation and its debt issuance activities. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 116/2006