All these issues have triggered uncertainties in the markets, causing the future forecasts to be more challenging and the participants’ exasperation to peak. I would consider the immunity shown by our economy in terms of price stability as the most outstanding development. Albania’s economic activity is progressing in line with our previous expectations. A few days ago, INSTAT published the inflation figure for August 2008, according to which annual inflation marked 2.5%. Following a 12-month period of inflation rates standing at around 4-4.5%, in line with our forecasts, it is assessed that inflation will fluctuate in the next few months at around 3%, which is our quantitative objective. Worth to note, however, is that the risk for its upward deviation is still present and it mostly relates with the international developments mentioned above. The main risks stemming from the internal environment relate to any possible deterioration of the energy situation and the plausible implications with the fiscal situation in the future. For the moment, the main risk stems from the lagged effects (otherwise referred to as second round effects) of certain developments such as the rise of wages beyond an acknowledged logical level. Any similar rise would generate new inflation, to later impose another rise in wages, which in turn would again and again trigger inflation. I do not think this is the right path. Wage-inflation spirals have been studied relatively early and they represent the least appropriate recipes to offset the inflation effects.

2  Many of these studies emphasise as the most salient features of recent developments: (i) the growing role of digital technologies in back, middle and front-office activities,2 (ii) the cross-jurisdictional nature of a wealth of financial services offerings today, (iii) the emergence and consolidation of non-traditional competitors, often with a previous universal footprint in the ITC field, and (iv) the prioritisation of customer-centric commercial strategies in response to what clearly are much less stable and long-term bank-client relationships. Banks have been reacting to the challenges of this new environment, and they have done so in manifold ways. For instance, financial intermediaries have been particularly agile in leveraging the opportunities offered by novel services such as cloud computing. They have also pioneered the analysis of how artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can help in both reducing the level of credit defaults and anticipating customer needs. In addition, some of them are actively pursuing strategic alliances with promising Fin Tech companies in search of business synergies. For this purpose, banks frequently combine cooperation agreements with ex-ante collaboration across potential partners via self-run accelerators or incubators. In addition, banks have also explored the extent to which liaising with Big Tech can yield mutual benefits and, conversely, in what circumstances their threat can be confronted by promoting cooperative ventures across the industry (both nationally and internationally). As a result, we have been witnessing how these more dynamic innovative environments are able to better address actual user needs and, in parallel, to generate new business opportunities.