samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Essentially an Asian growth story:  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  •  Rise of Asian middle class and growing affluence has generated demand for variety of financial services, including wealth management and insurance  •  Growth of Asian corporates has driven demand for offshore lending, foreign exchange trading, capital market activities, and risk management. 60. Some highlights in past year:  •  Assets under management (AUM) rose by 30% from $ trillion in 2013 to over $ trillion in 2014. •  Foreign exchange trading, measured by average daily turnover volume, increased by 40% from a year ago to reach $ billion in October 2014. •  Offshore non-life insurance, measured by gross written premiums, grew 8.8% yearon-year to $ billion in 2014. •  Corporate debt issuance grew 13% in 2014 as outstanding debt reached $ billion. Infrastructure financing space becoming more active. 61. Singapore already serves as important infra financing hub, with 60% of infra financing transactions in ASEAN led by project finance teams based in Singapore. •  MAS working closely with industry to develop toolkit for standardised public-private partnership contractual clauses. This will: o  o •  enhance bankability of infra projects; and facilitate subsequent capital market refinancing  Aim in coming years is to enhance infra financing ecosystem: o o  Work with MDBs to increase supply of bankable projects Facilitate greater institutional investor participation in infra assets. RMB market has taken off well. 62  Singapore currently second largest offshore RMB hub in world.

•  Individuals purchasing property are constrained on their total debt service ratio. 36. MAS announced new unsecured credit rules two years ago. •  FIs will not be allowed to grant further unsecured credit to borrower whose aggregate unsecured debt exceeds borrowing limit for 3 consecutive months. •  This limit has been set at 24 times borrower’s monthly income, and will be lowered to 18 times from 1 Jun 2017 and 12 times from 1 Jun 2019. 37. Vast majority of Singaporeans manage their debt well. •  Less than 2% of unsecured credit users affected by industry-wide borrowing limit. •  Nonetheless, this is about 22,000 borrowers who need help to manage down their debt. There are measures to help unsecured borrowers pay down their debts 38. Banks have worked with Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS) to develop a new Repayment Assistance Scheme (RAS). •  Convenient one-stop solution for borrower to work out centralised repayment solution with creditors. •  Lower interest rate of 5% p.a. over repayment period of 8 years for debt in excess of 12 times a borrower’s monthly income. Second consumer initiative: facilitate retail access to simple, low cost investment products 39. Last year I spoke about how MAS was working to improve savings and investment options for retail consumers. Made progress on three fronts. •  introduced Savings Bonds for flexible risk-free returns  •  facilitated access to $ corporate bonds for stable, long-term returns  •  expanded ETF options for diversified equity returns  40.
The increase in margins was particularly pronounced in 2008, but was lower in 2009, as illustrated by Chart 3. Besides the increase in margins, the non-interest terms and conditions of bank loans were also tightened considerably by banks. As examples, let me mention the increasing collateral requirements and loan covenants, as well as rises in noninterest charges. This is in line with evidence from a survey on the access to finance of SMEs in the euro area, which I will shortly discuss in more detail. However, I would like to mention at this point the results of the SME survey with respect to the development of the terms and conditions of bank loans in the first half of 2009. The bank lending survey and the survey on SMEs’ access to finance present an overall similar picture. For the first half of 2009, euro area SMEs point especially to a deterioration in the noninterest terms and conditions, such as charges, fees and commissions. In addition, a considerable net share of SMEs reported an increase in collateral requirements and other non-price terms and conditions, such as loan covenants and information requirements. This reported deterioration was, in net terms, much higher than that observed for interest rates. Italian SMEs also reported a tightening of non-interest terms and conditions, but – by contrast with average developments in the euro area as a whole – they reported a slight decline in interest rates.

The banking system in Singapore is well-placed to ride the current soft patch in economic conditions. •  First, banks in Singapore are well provisioned against potential losses. The banking system has set aside provisions to cover more than 100% of its NPLs. •  Second, the major banks in Singapore have sufficient liquid assets to meet continuous cash outflows over a 30-day period of high stress. •  Third, MAS’ annual industry-wide stress tests indicate that the banking system would remain resilient under very severe stress scenarios. Banks incorporated in Singapore have healthy capital buffers that are able to absorb the losses that are likely to occur under these severe scenarios. Banks in Singapore are also able to meet liquidity and funding needs under these extreme scenarios. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The financial centre: clean and trusted The growth of our financial centre has been underpinned by Singapore’s reputation as a clean and trusted jurisdiction. Upholding high standards of integrity in the financial industry is an absolute priority for MAS. There can be no compromise on this. This means having an effective regime against financial misconduct and misdemeanours, and money laundering and terrorism financing. These threats have escalated in recent years as our financial centre grew in scale, sophistication, and connectedness with the rest of the world. Take financial misconduct. You would recall the widespread manipulation of interest rate benchmarks by errant traders across the world’s major financial centres in the aftermath of the financial crisis. And it happened here too.
In addition, cross-border banks with subsidiary structures have to obey to the rules of the deposit insurance scheme in each country where they are represented. This is complicated and costly for them. Once they have become a member of a scheme and paid into it, it is often impossible to recover the funds in case they would like to streamline the group by moving to a branch structure, e.g. by becoming a Societas Europea. This might discourage cross-border groups from streamlining their company structure, which could become a factor limiting financial integration. In this area as well, I a missing a study providing answers that take all benefits and costs of different options into account. All these observations raise the issue as to whether the mechanisms for coordination at the level of the EU should be used to achieve more convergence in the various aspects of deposit insurance schemes in the context of the presently decentralised approach to financial regulation and stability. This convergence could go in the following directions. First, in addition to setting a lower bound, also the maximum amount covered could be limited and the specification which deposits are included and which not better harmonised. Partial insurance, or the so-called co-insurance, for smaller deposits could be removed where it still exists, as recent experience seems to suggest that it may reintroduce incentives for retail depositors to run a bank. Second, it may be advisable to move towards pre-funded schemes, which are financed through risk-sensitive premia. This would bring bank incentives better in line.

This report was published for the first time last year and it displays, among other things, our most important indicators to assess the degree of financial integration in different parts of the financial system. The second report will come out next month, and will again feature a number of interesting analyses and conclusions. I would like to mention yet another example in this group of activities, namely our contribution to the possible extension of the market transparency provisions in the Market in Financial Instruments Directive, in short MiFID, to financial instruments other than equities. The interest of the ECB in this issue follows in particular from the great importance of wellfunctioning markets for the transmission of monetary policy impulses. We explained our view at a public hearing held by the European Commission in September 2007. Focusing on post-  6  Schmiedel (2007), The economic impact of the Single Euro Payments Area, ECB occasional paper, no. 71, August. BIS Review 17/2008  3  trade transparency in retail and wholesale bond markets, we proposed a market-led controlled experiment about the trade-off between transparency and liquidity. In such an experiment, post-trade transparency could be gradually introduced, starting for example with the most liquid bond market segment, in order to assess its effects on market liquidity. The ECB stands ready to support such an experiment. In the present time, the importance of transparency in financial markets to allow for an efficient processing of information has of course become particularly evident.
Mugur Isărescu: Establishment of a new 15-county IMF-WB Constituency that already includes Romania Speech by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the establishment of a new IMF-WB Constituency that includes Romania, at the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group, Tokyo, 12 October 2012. *  *  *  Your Excellences, Ministers, Governors, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honored to have the opportunity to address you all on this special occasion and to welcome our new partners from Belgium and Luxembourg. This moment, when the establishment of a new, 15-country constituency, is formally announced, has several historical meanings, already presented by Minister de Jager. Let me add something from the experience of my country. Romania joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 1972 and has been a member of the Dutch Constituency ever since. It is worth mentioning that this Constituency had only five members in those days: The Netherlands, Israel, Cyprus, Yugoslavia and Romania. After 1990, I saw how, in a few years, the memberships grew to 13 countries. Despite this rapid enlargement with such diverse configuration and the huge transformation happening in all the countries in the last two decades, our Constituency has remained remarkably stable and has operated well. This is why I share the views of Minister de Jager that we have been able to find strength in our diversity.

Thus, the Supervision Department of the National Bank of Romania was set up with technical assistance from the Nederlandsche Bank. Also, forex and market operations developed from the co-operation with our colleagues from the Belgian central bank. Another form of cooperation between the member states of the Constituency was the fact that since 1993, a second constituency meeting at the level of ministers and governors was held annually in one of the member countries, on a rotating basis. The IMF management and senior staff were invited to speak on issues of interest. I have participated to almost all constituency meetings since 1990. I could testify that each of them was interesting and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  fruitful. As a veteran I cannot help but remember the first meeting after the fall of communism, in September 1990. At that time I met three not only impressive tall men, but also, outstanding personalities: Governor Wim Duisenberg, Minister Wim Kok and Executive Director Goddard Posthumus. I have to say I had the honour to collaborate with all the executive directors of our constituency. Thus, it is a pleasure to remember the extraordinary relationships developed with Onno Wijnholds, Age Bakker, Jeroen Kremers, Governor Nout Wellink and Minister Gerrit Zahn. Dear colleagues and friends, I am proud to say that the constituency meeting held in June this year, in Romania, where both Belgium and Luxembourg representatives were invited, was a step forward towards this formal outcome.
However, the aid measures promised so far have not succeeded in reassuring the markets. 3  See Reinhart and Rogoff (2010). BIS Review 56/2010  3  Several other countries also have serious problems with their public finances Other countries are also experiencing serious problems. Among the euro countries, apart from Greece, these are mainly Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain. Critical conditions for assessing how these countries shall attain a sustainable development of their public finances in the future are the current size of the public sector debt in relation to GDP, the credibility of their future fiscal policy and the conditions for growth in domestic and external demand. The larger a country’s debt in relation to its GDP, the greater its interest expenditure and the closer it is to an untenable situation. Among the countries I just mentioned, Italy has the largest burden of debt, with a gross public debt similar to that of Greece at just over 100 per cent of GDP. The other countries are not quite so vulnerable, but their debts are rising rapidly. (Slide: Gross public debt in Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain). The credibility of their future fiscal policy is a decisive factor, not least for the rate of interest they are forced to pay on their public debt. Here, earlier patterns of balance or deficit play an important role, as does, of course, the content of their fiscal policy consolidation programme.

Modelling the desired behaviors sets a powerful example and serves as a form of behavioral risk mitigation. All of these actions reflect choices that a firm makes, either implicitly or explicitly, that can build cultural capital. On the other hand, cultural capital can also decline or deteriorate as a result of internal choices. For example, overt incidences of misconduct such as a trading scandal or a legal issue, deviations between employees’ actual experiences and a firms’ stated values, or observations of 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  inappropriate behavior that is tolerated or even rewarded can all contribute to the depreciation of a firm’s cultural capital. This decline can be self-reinforcing as certain behaviors are rewarded and individuals advance in an organization, or the composition of the workforce changes as employees choose to work at firms with higher cultural capital. The Pandemic’s Impact on Cultural Capital While the discussion so far has focused on how internal choices that a firm or its employees make can impact cultural capital, it is equally true that external factors have the potential to have a similar impact. For example, changes to social norms around what constitutes acceptable workplace practices can alter behavioral norms inside a firm. The nation-wide racial justice movement is another example of an external factor that could impact the internal culture, based on the choices a firm makes in its response. The current COVID-19 pandemic will also surely impact cultural capital in unpredictable and enduring ways.
Both the central bank and the central government can default on their payments in two ways: by not repaying the debt, or by inflating away the debt. It does happen that countries fail to repay their debts. If the debt lies with the central bank, it is more likely that it will be inflated away. Based on this reasoning, are there situations where the central bank should step into areas similar to fiscal policy? Yes, there could be such situations. One might be if an acute shortage of liquidity arises, for instance, during a financial crisis. 4 In a speech given in 2013, Larry Summers talked about “secular stagnation”. See Rachel and Summers (2019). See, for instance, Bartsch et al. (2019), Bernanke (2016), Bernanke (2019), Eichenbaum (2019), Reichlin et al. (2019) and Shirai (2019). 5  3 [7]  Central banks are better than government at creating liquidity quickly. 6 Another situation is if the market begins pricing a higher credit risk in government bonds than in central bank money. If one wants the credit risk to be transformed into an inflation risk, it may be desirable for the central bank to step in and support the government's funding, for instance by buying government bonds or through direct transfers to the treasury. A similar situation may arise in a monetary union if there is no fiscal policy at union level. But we are not close to one of these situations in Sweden today. Our public finances are in good shape. National debt is low.

The Riksbank needs to develop its work on how to take climate change into consideration in asset management. For instance, we need broader and deeper analysis of the issuers’ climate footprint. At the same time, one must remember that the foreign exchange reserves are unavoidably dominated by US and German government bonds. The Riksbank's contribution to a better development of the climate will therefore remain small. This is entirely natural. The important decisions on how climate change should be counteracted in Sweden are political and should be taken by the government and the Riksdag (parliament). 6 [7]  References Bank for International Settlements (2014), “Re-thinking the lender of last resort”, BIS Papers no 79, Monetary and Economic Department, September 2014. Bartsch, Elga, Jean Boivin, Stanley Fischer, Philipp Hildebrand (2019), “Dealing with the next downturn: From unconventional monetary policy to unprecedented policy coordination”, Macro and market perspectives, August 2019, BlackRock Investment Institute. Bernanke, Ben S. (2016), “What tools does the Fed have left? Part 3: Helicopter money”, blog post, Brookings. Bernanke, Ben S. (2019), “Monetary Policy in a New Era”, in Evolution or Revolution: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy After the Great Recession, O. Blanchard and L. H. Summers (eds. ), Cambridge, The MIT Press. Cœuré, Benoît (2018), “Monetary Policy and Climate Change”, Speech at a conference on “Scaling up Green Finance: The Role of Central Banks”, Berlin, 8 November 2018. Eichenbaum, Martin S. (2019), “Rethinking Fiscal Policy in an Era of Low Interest Rates”, mimeo, Department of Economics, Northwestern University.
In this regard, the Bank of Albania considers remittances as an important source of income in the economy and a contributor to the Balance of Payments. From a narrower perspective, remittances are estimated to have a significant impact on Albanian households, for reducing the poverty and improving the quality of life. Even in the case of Albania, the studies performed by the Bank of Albania and the World Bank show that the income from remittances are allocated mainly for consumption, medication, and education, as well as for savings and investments, the latter mainly for residential properties. In addition to the above, the Bank of Albania treats remittances also from the perspective of their inflow channels in the Albanian economy. Recent studies show that the formal transfer channels dominate, mainly through money transfer financial institutions, and less through banks. In the meantime, remittances in cash remain at high levels, which is worth for an in-depth analysis. The World Bank survey conducted in 2016 concluded that the reasons for the limited use of the banking channels are the high costs on money transfers and the perceived cumbersome and complex procedures. To illustrate my point, according to this survey, the costs of remittances toward Albania are estimated at 9.4 per cent of the amount sent, compared to the 7.2 per cent average in the region. We are all aware that the more financial channels are used, the more finances penetrate in the economy.

We invite the banking industry and other actors in the financial system to contribute to this initiative, with concrete vision and products, taking into account that you can play a special role in effectively mobilising remittances. Reasserting our institutional support and commitment for this initiative, I am confident that this will be an on-going dialogue to facilitate every undertaking in the aspect of remittances. Thank you for your attention! 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
Let me offer four suggestions. First, we must help corporates understand the value of green financing. Singapore financial institutions have been partnering local authorities in Chongqing to build capabilities in green finance through workshops and online seminars. Second, we must ensure common understanding of what constitutes green or transition activities. In Singapore, an industry taskforce is developing a taxonomy that encompass green and transition activities. We are keen to collaborate with partners in China to identify commonalities in our taxonomies to unlock more cross-border sustainable financing flows. Third, we must enable corporates which want to improve their sustainability performance obtain cheaper financing in the form of sustainability-linked bonds and loans. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  Sustainability loans can provide discounts on the lending rate if predefined sustainability performance targets are met. MAS’ grant schemes can help to defray the costs that borrowers incur to certify the fulfilment of sustainability targets. Fourth, we must explore innovative policy measures to facilitate qualified Chinese enterprises to issue green bonds overseas. For example, corporates from Chongqing or the broader Western Region could be allowed expedited approval for green bond issuances in Singapore. This could be done within specified limits and perhaps something akin to a dedicated green foreign debt quota for Chongqing. A growing number of Chongqing and Western Region companies are tapping Singapore to obtain green financing. Just last month, Chongqing Three Waters Conservancy and Power Co. signed an MOU with Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank to explore a potential RMB 1 billion green bond issuance in Singapore.

There are more such deals in the pipeline, and I urge Chinese companies issuing green and sustainability bonds or taking green loans to seriously consider doing so in Singapore. I look forward to our continued cooperation with Chongqing. I am confident that our initiatives under the CCI will help build a more resilient, digital and sustainable future for our two countries. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches