samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Closer to the region, a recent report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) highlighted that South East Asian countries require funding worth USD3.1 trillion for climate-adjusted infrastructure in the region by 20301. In Malaysia, among other means, green financing is being rolled out through schemes such as the Green Technology Financing Scheme (GTFS). Some institutions are allocating capital and steering financial flows towards more low-carbon, climate resilient activities. However, considerable funding gaps remain. Public finance will likely be inadequate for this task and there is inevitably a need to draw in private capital. The renewable energy sector for example, requires a total of RM33.5 billion of funding by 20252, based on the projections provided by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Malaysia. There is no ready panacea to the funding issues that we face. We need to understand the root cause to come up with possible solutions. In my view, one of the most critical issues is the mismatch in funding demand and supply; and information asymmetry. We need to find a way to bridge the language and information gap between scientists, government and financiers. What science says about climate effects, what climate action the Government is prioritising, what industries are providing and investing in – are quite incongruent at this point. While there is now a stronger demand for green financing, it is not matched by the supply side, due to information gaps between financiers and green promoters.

What I am asking is for us to harness the best parts of capitalism and to use it to tackle what is the biggest challenge of our generation. I certainly hope that our conversations today will help us better understand the issues at hand and inspire us to find better financial solutions. Let us find ways to green the financial system, and subsequently finance the green. Finally, earlier I spoke about the key players in tackling the climate challenge, namely the Government, NGOs, business and the financial sector. I have left the most important one actually, which is the individuals. Change can only come if we start with ourselves. We ought to start with a small personal change, which is to lower our personal carbon footprint. By itself it might be small, in terms of emission. Importantly however, it will initiate a deeper realisation, stoke more passion for the issue, catalyse deeper and more engaged conversations with others, and hopefully create more momentum for systems level change that we all aspire to see. 1  Source: Asian Development Bank (2020). Green Finance Strategies for Post-Covid-19 Economic Recovery in Southeast Asia: Greening Recoveries for Planet and People. October. 2 Malaysian Green Financing Taskforce Report 2019 3  Joint Statement by Bank Negara Malaysia and Securities Commission Malaysia – Accelerating climate action through the financial sector  3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
NOK 1735 billion)  (NOK 479 5 billion)  28%  29%  3%  66%  69%  Cards (both c redit a nd de bit card)  Electron ic giro services  5%  Cheques an d other p aper-ba sed payment services  Source: Norges Bank, Annual Report on Payment Systems 1998  We see that the share in value of payments made with payment cards - in spite of a sharp increase in the number of transactions - has not advanced much (still accounting for a mere 3-5% of the total transaction amount in the payment system). The average amount per transaction remains fairly low – i.e. approximately NOK 400. In general, we can nevertheless say that with the exception of cash, payment cards have become Norway’s most important payment instrument for small transactions. On the other hand, the electronic giro is the instrument which has increased the most in terms of value. The increase in direct transfers by business terminals has been particularly sharp, while the growth rate has been highest for “new” services - such telebanking and home banking. These developments are important for the further improvement of payment system efficiency. The emergence of home banking is a natural progression from telebanking, an area which is already highly developed in Norway. At the beginning of 1999, the vast majority of banks in Norway were able to offer giro services over the Internet, and turnover in 1998 already amounted to a good NOK 7bn.

Considering that PC and Internet coverage in Norway is high, conditions should be favourable for developments in this area. In this connection, it will also be exciting to see how banks meet new demands for payment services related to increased trading over the Internet. Based on the above, I would conclude that efficiency in the Norwegian payment system has improved considerably in the 1990s. Factors behind these developments The transition to electronic payment instruments is obviously closely connected with the spread of information technology in Norway in the 1990s. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the correlation between new technology and an increase in efficiency is not automatic. Efficiency is the result of interaction between technology, institutions and users. The following three prerequisites must be in place for an efficient use of new technology: First, system participants must be able to make use of the new technology. Coordination of the Norwegian payment system has been an important factor behind the swift adoption of new electronic payment services by the industry. Second, it is imperative that customers gain quick and moderately BIS Review 7/2000  6  priced access to the new payment services, such as has been the case with the spread of EFTPOS terminals.7 And third - and perhaps most importantly - the payment system must encourage the use of (cost-) effective payment instruments. The public must face correct incentives if their payment habits are to be changed in the right direction.
Monetary policy should not, and in the end cannot, prevent such changes in relative prices. They will show up either in higher consumer prices or in a lower level of other prices and pay. Either way, the result is the same – a loss of real purchasing power. This year our real take-home pay will rise at a slower pace than national productivity. Rising fuel, gas, electricity and food prices, mean that average real take-home pay will stagnate this year. It will not be an easy time, and I know that some families will find it particularly difficult. But it is only a temporary slowing in the growth of our real take-home pay and remember that this is the opposite side of the coin to the falls in prices of manufactured goods from countries such as China and India, which in the nice decade allowed our standard of living to rise at a rate faster than productivity. The squeeze on real take-home pay will arguably be an even more significant restraint on consumer spending this year than the credit crunch. And it will affect the housing market too – lower demand in the high street will go hand in hand with lower demand in the property market. I have said in the past that there is no causal link between house prices and consumer spending. That remains the case. How closely they move together depends on the underlying forces that are driving them both.

Without a clear guide to the objective of monetary policy, and a credible commitment to meeting it, any rise in inflation might become a self-fulfilling and generalised increase in prices and wages. And surely the lesson of the past fifty years is that, when inflation becomes embedded, the cost of getting it back down again is a prolonged period of sluggish output and high unemployment. Price stability – returning inflation to the target – is a precondition for sustained growth, not an alternative. We are in the most challenging period since the MPC was set up in 1997. But we have the right framework in place to ensure that inflation returns to the target and growth recovers. The stormy waters we are navigating now make for an uncomfortable passage compared with the calm conditions of the nice decade. Our inflation performance then was surprising not so much because inflation was low, but because it was so remarkably stable. Neither inflation nor growth are likely to be as stable in the future. But even if inflation proves to be more variable, it will not be systematically either higher or lower than the target. The right framework is essential if we are to maintain low inflation and steady growth. But there are two recent developments in our economy at present that no monetary policy, whatever the framework, can prevent. The first is the impact on living standards of rising food and energy prices. These prices have risen relative to most other prices.
Over the past 30 years, globalisation has flowed as never before. Trade integration has risen at a rate of over 1 percentage point per year, international capital integration at a rate of 6 percentage points per year. Today, the ratio of world trade to GDP is two and a half times its level at the end of the Second World War. The ratio of global external assets to world GDP is nearly ten times this level. Global integration of goods, services, money and people is at levels well beyond those seen previously. The creation and exchange of information has undergone an even more remarkable phase shift. The stock of information currently available is estimated to be around 1,200 exa-bytes1 Sufficient, if it were placed on CDs, to stretch to the moon and back almost three times. Sufficient for every person on the planet to each have over 300 times more information than was stored in the great library at Alexandria which, 2000 years ago, housed the sum of all human knowledge (Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger (2013)). What is more, almost all of this information is new. Over 90% of it has become available in the past 10 years. Nearly half has become available in the past 3 years. This rate of expansion is unlikely to slow. Google alone processes 25 million gigabytes of data each day (Devenport et al. (2012)). Wal-Mart is handling 1 million new transactions every hour. Facebook is home to 40 billion digital photographs which increase at a rate of 10 million per hour.

Macro-prudential policy protects the financial system from itself and the wider economy from its consequences. The FPC’s actions to date have been completely consistent with those objectives. For example, it has called for UK banks to increase their capital levels to safeguard their future resiliance. It has also relaxed liquid assets requirements for UK banks to support future growth. Through these actions, the FPC has sought to protect the financial system from itself and the wider economy from its consequences. In future, the FPC will have at its disposal a Countercyclical Capital Buffer (CCB) and Sectoral Capital Requirements (SCR). These are designed explicitly to lean against financial cycles. Like monetary policy, they operate symmetrically to constrain credit booms and cushion busts. They help safeguard today’s younger generation from the impatient grasp of their parents and grandparents, to avoid the ultimate deceit. The FPC can also invest in financial public goods – for example, new financial infrastructure to support resilience. In the past, central banks helped build market infrastructures such as payment, clearing and settlement systems to support resilience. Like lampposts and  4  8  The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the third point of the regulatory triangle of the UK. It has responsibility, among other things, for consumer protection. BIS central bankers’ speeches  language, these are classic public goods. In future, the FPC may wish to help build other types of market infrastructure – for example, securitisation markets – to help create a more diverse financial system.
Most importantly of all, it confirmed that the Bank had sufficient lending capacity in place to meet an extremely severe liquidity shock,  11  See for instance: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2017/speech960.pdf. 10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  10  which allowed the Bank to make reassuring statements about its readiness to act. In the event no such shock occurred. But the Bank’s preparedness played a part in that. Just as we expect firms to be ready for the unexpected, we hold ourselves to the same standard. Indeed this exercise drove home an important broader point: for central banks to be effective watchmen (all the time) and firefighters (occasionally), we first need private sector risk managers to have drawn up (and shared with us) their own fire precaution and exit route plans. Without a good understanding of firms’ potential liquidity needs under stress, their alternative sources of liquidity and available collateral we cannot fully evaluate our own capacity to lend. This sort of liquidity planning under stress is I know an increasing focus for both banks and non-banks alike, and is something we would actively encourage. (iii)  Calibrating the Bank’s own capital  I mentioned at the start of my remarks that central bank capital is different to that of a commercial bank: central banks need to meet a ‘policy solvency’ rather than a ‘financial solvency’ test.

And operational reforms designed to address the deficiencies in the Bank’s pre-crisis lending tools and flag 5  clearly that the Bank was ‘open for business’ , have left the Bank capable of lending to a wide range of banks and non-banks, against many different types of collateral, at lower prices, and through a broad range of facilities. As of 2016, members of the Bank’s Sterling Monetary Framework – our main liquidity-providing tool – had pre-positioned over £ of collateral with us, including 30% of the UK’s total stock of household mortgage loans. Only a fifth of that collateral had been drawn against, through the Funding for Lending Scheme and other Bank facilities. Even after accounting for the Bank’s sizeable haircuts, that leaves well over £ of available credit: a much higher proportionate level of contingent exposure for the Bank than typically incurred by commercial banks through undrawn facilities. So our balance sheet may expand in both scale and riskiness at times of heightened liquidity stress: the Bank of England’s role as financial firefighter has shifted permanently upwards (Chart 5). 5  See http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/news/2012/cr2winters.pdf; and the Bank’s new framework at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/Documents/money/publications/liquidityinsurance.pdf. The reforms are summarised in a speech by the Governor at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/2013/690.aspx. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  The third key driver behind our new risk framework has been the strong public demand for greater accountability and transparency from central banks since the financial crisis.
7  quarters that the effect of nominal GDP growth is correctly interpreted, as it could have a less beneficial impact than in previous periods on the sustainability of private debt, given that it would be more closely related to higher production costs which drive down agents’ income. Likewise, the tightening of financial conditions would drive up the debt service ratio. Developments in the Spanish banking industry  As regards bank balance sheet credit quality, non-performing lending to the resident private sector fell by 5.4% in 2021, a drop which quickened to 7.1% year-on-year in 2022 Q1. This decline confirms the differential performance of non-performing loans (NPLs) in this crisis, with the economic policy measures proving crucial in maintaining households’ and firms’ ability to pay and their net lending. Thus, the NPL ratio for credit to the resident private sector stood at 4.1% at March 2022, compared with 4.8% at end2019. Despite this good NPL performance, there are potential latent impairments in some credit portfolios, particularly those linked with the most vulnerable segments of firms and households. Specifically, Stage 2 loans5 continued to rise at high rates at end-2021 (14% year-on-year), although notably below the growth rates of previous quarters. Meanwhile, Stage 2 loans accounted for 8% of all loans, up 2.2 pp on pre-pandemic levels. Forborne loans,6 the bulk of which are classified as Stage 2 or non-performing exposures, also rose by 14% in 2021, owing to a sharp rise among NFCs and sole proprietors.

However, given the sizeable volume of repayments and the relatively small share of new loans as a proportion of the total stock (owing to the long duration of mortgage loans), the stock of mortgage credit rose by just 1.4% year-on-year in March 2022. In turn, the stock of credit to construction and real estate development continued to decline. Indeed, new housebuilding has not recovered with the same strength as demand for housing, and this is probably being reflected in house prices. Specifically, in 2022 Q1, housing investment accounted for 5.4% of GDP; this compares with 6.2% in 2020 Q1 and is less than half the figure recorded during the real estate boom in the run-up to the global financial crisis. 2  Average debt-to-GDI and debt burden-to-GDI ratios increased in 2020 owing to the decline in GDI. The recovery in GDI drove down these ratios in 2021. 5  Indicators of price imbalances on the real estate market have been showing some minor signs of overvaluation since early 2020. These indicators climbed slightly in 2021 and could increase further if the acceleration in house prices observed in 2022 Q1 takes a firm hold.3 Yet prices are close to their equilibrium levels and distant from the levels reached in the runup to the global financial crisis. In any event, they will have to be closely monitored in the coming quarters. The ongoing macro-financial developments may affect this variable in opposite directions.
The US certainly has the advantage of having a young and growing population, but Europe has large numbers of unemployed or underemployed people who could become mobilized for increased growth of the  2  BIS Review 70/2002  economy, This need not imply that Europe must adopt US hiring and firing practices, there are other ways of achieving this, with economic incentives, labour market policies and education. Challenges for Sweden ahead of a possible EMU participation Wage formation is also an important challenge for Sweden prior to a possible EMU participation. The main issue after a possible participation in the euro zone will be the loss of the exchange rate and an independent monetary policy as stabilisation tools. If Sweden, within EMU, is out of step with the business cycle in the euro area, neither an exchange rate, nor Swedish interest rates are available to adjust for this. In reality, the exchange rate may in fact be a less efficient stabiliser than expected. It is quite apparent that macroeconomic fundamentals and Sweden's position in the business cycle have not been the only, sometimes not even the major, factors affecting exchange rate developments. If the weakening of the krona in 2001 did indeed cushion the blow from global recession, earlier periods of weakness have run counter to the overall improved relative growth performance. Personally, I believe that there might be a tendency in the Swedish debate to overstate the gains from having a flexible exchange rate in the longer run.

Our recent experience shows that a small currency on the highly volatile financial markets risk being more affected than the bigger currencies by factors out of its control and with no direct relevance to their economic performance. One such example was the reaction on the currency markets in the days following the 11 September events. It is also quite apparent that the present strengthening of the krona was influenced by the Prime Minister raising the issue of a referendum on EMU. Furthermore, recent experience implies that the deviations from the euro average growth should not be very large in the normal case. Even if Swedish growth and productivity have been somewhat higher than those of the euro area since 1999, recent evaluations show that that the business cycles in the euro area and Sweden are fairly synchronised, despite the asymmetric shocks due to the crises in the mobile telecommunications and IT sectors. However, it cannot be ruled out that Sweden can become subject to serious asymmetric shocks, i.e. disturbances affecting Sweden differently from the rest of the euro area. On those occasions it is important that Sweden has an alternative way of stabilising the economy. One possible instrument is of course to use fiscal policy. The Riksbank recently presented its views on the government report "Stabilisation policy in the Monetary Union" where we elaborate on the possibility of using fiscal policy to stabilise inflation in a similar way as monetary policy does today.
All of these measures have implications for individual customers of banks, but their rationale derives from the MA's principal function: to promote the general stability and effective working of the system. The important thing to note about this "principal function" of the MA under the Banking Ordinance is that it relates to general, "macro", systemic issues, to the safety and soundness of banks and the system as a whole, not to the relationship between individual consumers and their banks. The HKMA's involvement in promoting and encouraging proper standards of conduct and sound and prudent business practices under section 7(2) of the Banking Ordinance is only incidental to its primary function of promoting the stability and effective working of the banking system. Nevertheless, even in the absence of an explicit legal mandate for consumer protection, the HKMA has become increasingly involved in this area, particularly in helping to develop the Code of Banking Practice and in enforcing banks' compliance with the Code. One recent real-life example of this is a quite appalling case of mistaken identity that recently came to our attention. The debt collection agency of a certain bank was pursuing debts against an innocent and entirely unconnected third party who happened to be living in the last known address of the real defaulter. The agent did not identify itself and the bank for whom it was acting when collecting debt.

Solid bars show change from December 2019's statistical cutoff; hollow bars show changes with respect to max and min. (2) Increase (decrease) indicates depreciation (appreciation). (3) Multilateral exchange rate. Source: Bloomberg. 9  Figure 3 Change in 5-year CDS and EMBI since December 2019 MP Report (*) (basis points)  5-year CDS spread Sudáfrica México Brasil Colombia Rusia Indonesia Chile Perú España Portugal Grecia Italia Francia Australia Reino Unido China Japón N. Zelanda Alemania EE.UU. Rep. Corea Hungría Noruega Polonia -100  EMBI spread 245  Sudáfrica  151 149 148 148 121  México  0  50  100  338  India  75 65 63 61 44 38 22 21 21 21 20 18 15 9 7 6 5 3 -50  385  254  Colombia  203  Indonesia  191  Hungría  177  Malasia  173  Chile  165  Brasil  159  Perú  153  Rusia  153  Polonia  88  China 150  200  250  300  -100  64 0  100  200  300  400  500  (*) Green bars stand for emerging economies; orange bars for Latin America; blue bars for developed. Solid bars show change from December 2019's statistical cutoff; hollow bars show changes with respect to max and min. Multilateral exchange rate. Source: Bloomberg.