samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
More generally, economic distortions and loss of revenue caused by financial crimes can also threaten our growth prospects. While there are many issues that I could speak about on financial crimes today, I would like to focus on what has been at the top of many minds – cybercrimes. Indeed, cybercrimes are a global menace. McAfee reported that cybercrime cost the global economy more than 1 trillion dollars in 2020, or more than 1% of global GDP. Malaysia is not spared from this growing threat. As indicated in the National Risk Assessment 2020, fraud – which includes cybercrimes – is among the country’s top high-risk crimes, with a higher number of cases and losses suffered compared to the previous assessment conducted in 2017. More than 20,000 cybercrimes were reported in 2021 alone, involving losses of RM560 million. Between 2017 to July 2021, Malaysians suffered losses of about RM2.23 billion on account of cybercrimes. As more people switch to mobile phones for online transactions, we are also seeing an increase in online banking fraud incidents involving mobile malware. Although fraud losses remain low as a share of the total value of online banking transactions, they point to ever present and evolving threats as society adapts to new norms of living and doing business. Indeed, criminals are exploiting the rapid dispersion of technology in this recent period. This is not a trend that will reverse. Therefore, strengthening the financial system’s defence against emerging threats and vulnerabilities must remain a top priority.

And the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Our success requires all parties; the private sector, regulators, law enforcement agencies and other government bodies, and consumers alike, to do their part – to adapt to these new threats, to transform themselves to deal with these challenges, and to collaborate to safeguard the integrity of our country’s financial system. See also: Accompanying Presentation Deck to Governor’s IFCTF Keynote Address
A perceived comparative advantage of the United States in creating “high quality” financial assets from real investments may also have played a part (Caballero, Farhi and Gourinchas, 2008). This resulted in downward pressure on the yields on government bonds and other safe assets, and upward pressure on asset prices generally. Low long-term safe interest rates would also have encouraged the shift into riskier assets through the risk-taking channel described above. Second, the lead-up to the crisis was also a long period of steady growth coupled with low and stable inflation (the Great Moderation). 2 Households, businesses and market participants were consequently faced with a complex signal-extraction problem: how much of this reduction in economic volatility was permanent? Whereas many economic signal extraction problems involve learning about the first moments of a distribution, this involves making inferences about higher moments. The longer such a period of low volatility lasts, the more reasonable it is to assume that it is permanent. But given the necessary infrequency with which tail events occur, there may be a natural tendency for people erroneously to conclude that they could never happen simply because none have materialised recently. Certainly market measures of uncertainty are consistent with this idea, as measures of volatility implied from options prices (such as the VIX) suggest that the perceived risks in financial markets had shrunk to extremely low levels by 2006.

Is it possible that the two are sufficiently close in their effects that they are in effect perfect substitutes? In that case, it is not clear that having the additional instrument is of much value; the two instruments need to have sufficiently differentiated effects to be useful. Second, to the extent that they are sufficiently independent, is there any danger of a “pushme, pull-you” outcome if the instruments are set by different authorities? To investigate these issues, we employ a standard, though stylised, sticky-price New Keynesian macroeconomic model, augmented to incorporate both physical capital and a simple banking sector. The model is a version of that of Gertler and Karadi (2009), stripped of features such as habit persistence that are inessential for our purposes. The key additional ingredients relative to the standard New Keynesian model are twofold. First, funds flowing from savers to borrowers must be intermediated through a banking system. Banks take in deposits, Dt, from households, on which they contract to pay a given nominal interest rate. Together with their stock of retained profits (bank capital, Bt), these funds are then lent out to finance the physical capital that firms carry through into the next period. The real (gross) return on this lending, Rkt+1, then includes the marginal product of that capital plus any associated capital gains or losses as the price of physical capital evolves, net of the inflation rate.
In order for us to attain this vision, we need to improve the financial infrastructure in Zambia. The Government intends to achieve this through the implementation of the Financial Sector Development Plan. An improved financial infrastructure will result in efficient capital and money markets which will in turn attract foreign investment into our economy. However, in order to attract and retain foreign investment, we need to have the ability to provide investors with transparent information that will result in efficient investment decisions, higher returns and greater investor confidence. Without confidence, investors will simply find somewhere else to invest their money. High quality, investor oriented and transparent financial reporting attract both seekers and providers of capital. This is where accountants come in, to ensure the provision of reliable and transparent financial information to potential investors and other users of financial statements. 2  BIS Review 57/2010  Ladies and Gentlemen, I am certain that as members of ZICA you take pride in helping improve the financial sector in Zambia. This is done through standard setting. I recognize the fact that Accounting standards provide the foundation for the production of high quality financial information. I am aware that ZICA has adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS’s) in full and that all members of ZICA are obliged to ensure compliance with IFRS. However, it is unfortunate that despite ZICA adopting IFRS, it is not a legal requirement under the Securities Act, the Insurance Act, the Banking and Financial Services Act and also at the Lusaka Stock Exchange.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Malaysia’s fast-changing financial landscape Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the 26th Annual Dinner 2005 of The Association of Merchant Banks, Kuala Lumpur, 3 December 2005. *  *  *  I am pleased to be here tonight on this special occasion of the 26th Annual Dinner of the Association of Merchant Banks in Malaysia. The year 2005 is a particularly significant year for the merchant banking industry in particular and for the financial sector more generally. While this decade has seen significant changes taking place in our financial landscape that followed from the restructuring, consolidation, greater investment in technology, deregulation, liberalisation and changes in the regulatory environment, the year 2005 has seen an intensification of the pace of change in the financial sector. Let me take this opportunity to discuss the macroeconomic environment which these changes are occurring, and discuss further some of the more recent changes that are taking place in the financial system. Our economy has been able to continue to benefit from the favourable external environment as the global economy demonstrates its robustness in an environment of high oil prices and rising global interest rates. On the domestic front, our overall performance was further reinforced with the expanding domestic demand. Latest indicators suggest that the growth momentum remains firmly on track, with an improved growth of 5.3% in the third quarter.
These problems may in turn spread to a number of banks and at worst threaten financial stability. Retail payments consist of many transactions of limited size and retail settlement amounts are normally modest. Normally, problems in the retail payment system will not pose a threat to financial stability. Therefore, more emphasis can be placed on executing retail payments quickly and at reasonable cost. The purpose of the provisions in Chapter 3 of the Act relating to Payment Systems, etc. from 1999 is to contribute to ensuring that systems for payment services are organised and operated in a way that promotes safe and efficient payments and effective and coordinated execution of payment services. This responsibility has been delegated to the Norwegian Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission. The Norwegian Banking, Insurance and Securities Commission and Norges Bank cooperate closely on issues of relevance to the retail payment systems. In accordance with the requirements of the Norges Bank Act, Norges Bank has focused on efficiency in the retail payment system as a whole. In most western countries, the payment system lays claim to between 1 and 3 per cent of GDP. More efficient structures can therefore result in substantial savings and free up resources for other purposes. In Norway, banks use NOK 5.9 billion to produce payment services. Costs to the payer and payee in connection with payment transactions come in addition.

Malaysia has one of the most active primary sukuk market with an average annual growth of 17% during the period 2001-2006. It also has one of the most active secondary market with the turnover of the sukuk trading registered more than USD40 billion annually. International issuers with good rating will benefit from the simplified issuance procedures. This is in addition to the ability to issue multi-currency sukuk and the flexibility to swap RM funding into other currencies to enable foreign issuers to capitalize on the price premium of issuing RM denominated sukuks. A further area of collaboration is outsourcing, in-sourcing or white labelling. These mechanisms will not only serve as a means to drive down cost of doing business, achieving economies of scale and the avoidance of duplication of resources, but also gives optimum focus by players to develop the newly ventured Islamic finance business. Malaysia's experience in Islamic financial operations and product design can be leveraged upon to systematically structure a complete solution to be offered to other players. Going forward, Islamic finance as a new industry requires more initiatives to expand the horizon of business parameters and innovative products offerings. There is a need to conduct further in-depth research on Shariah issues relating to risk mitigation, liquidity management and hedging. The combined market knowledge and insights from education and training institutions such as INCEIF, the International Centre for Education in Islamic Finance in Malaysia can make meaningful contributions to the global Islamic finance industry that addressed both market needs and Shariah compliance.
•  The central banks of the euro area are able to offer support to economies in the short term, but there is a price to this, and such support can only be for a limited time. Central banks are not omnipotent and the responsibility for making reforms and explaining the need for reforms must fall squarely on the shoulders of governments and parliaments. Monetary policy in the euro area had an eventful 2014. Inflation in the euro area was falling last year and the expectations for inflation among market participants were on the downside, which led the central banks of the euro area to maintain their accommodative stance on monetary policy. The accommodative monetary policy has three main elements: •  The Governing Council of the European Central Bank took the decision to cut the interest rates at which commercial banks can borrow from the euro-area central banks to their lowest levels ever under monetary union. •  Targeted long-term loans were offered to the commercial banks in the euro area. It is important that low interest rates be passed on to the real economy and that good business projects be able to get funding from banks on reasonable terms. •  Purchases of assets held by the private sector started and large-scale purchases of sovereign bonds were started in March this year. •  It is no secret that I am no supporter of the plan to purchase government bonds.

It would consist of an agreement between firms and workers, under the social dialogue framework, to share the inevitable loss of national income that higher commodity import prices entail. Fiscal policy should also play a key role, avoiding an across-the-board fiscal impulse and the use of automatic indexation clauses in expenditure items. Conversely, efforts should focus on supporting lower-income households, who bear the brunt of inflation, and the firms most vulnerable to this new shock. Moreover, any measures should be temporary, so as not to further increase the structural budget deficit. They should also be designed to avoid significant distortions to price signals. However, offsetting the adverse effects of the current supply-side shock also calls for ambitious policies to boost productivity growth and potential GDP. In the framework of the NGEU programme, investment projects must be carefully selected in order to optimally complement, and act as a catalyst for, private investment.2 But they must also be accompanied by structural reforms to support, for example, the reallocation of resources across firms and sectors. Indeed, a recent Banco de España paper3 shows that if projects with a high degree of complementarity between public and private investment are selected under the NGEU programme, and if structural reforms that reduce product and labour market rigidities are introduced, the potential growth rate of the Spanish economy could reach around 2% by the end of the decade compared with 1% in the absence of these effects.
Inflationary pressures are stronger than expected and are spreading across expenditure items, exacerbating the loss of purchasing power Inflationary pressures in the euro area have been more intense and more persistent than expected throughout the year. Euro area inflation stood at 9.1% in August. Higher energy prices are the main factor behind these high inflation levels. Indeed, it is estimated that, between their direct impact on energy goods in the consumption basket and their indirect effect through other goods and services, they are responsible for somewhat more than 60% of the growth in inflation. Yet the increase in food prices is also very significant; in fact, food prices are directly responsible for almost 25% of the increase in inflation. In any event, inflationary pressures have gradually spread to the less volatile prices in the consumption basket. Higher production costs have passed through to consumer prices  2  faster than expected, against a backdrop of manufacturing bottlenecks and demand pressures associated with the economic reopening. Underlying inflation in the euro area was over 4% in August, and over 3% in all euro area countries. Moreover, inflation was over 4% in more than half the underlying inflation components (in 41% of them in Spain).

In switching to renminbi, corporations should review on the internal changes required, such as invoicing and trade documentation in renminbi, accounting and any other operational procedures, including engaging banks which are able to provide advice and facilitate trade financing in renminbi. Banks need to be ready in this area, to develop the system to support the trade financing and to be familiar and current with the rules and regulations of the Chinese authorities. Further improvement should be looked into to entice more participation, and efficient ways should be explored to ease trade facilitation in renminbi. In another aspect, this space can also capitalise on another work area of the Financial Market Committee in looking at the introduction of a more standardised documentation requirement across industry. Coupled with the broader and more flexible trade financing facilities and hedging tools, this will create a more business-friendly market which will in turn amplify participation. 5. Last but not least, is to develop investment products in renminbi. In the past, the efforts in promoting the use of renminbi has primarily emphasised transactions or trades in goods and services between the two countries. With the transformation and internationalisation of renminbi, we should accelerate our understanding of the renminbi financial markets and to see the renminbi as a viable choice of currency for financial investments. In November 2015, China granted RQFII country quota of RMB50 billion to Malaysia to enable financial institutions here to invest in China’s onshore financial markets. The renminbi financial market in Malaysia remains incomplete with limited investment avenues.
When we felt that this confidence was in the process of becoming undermined in 2014 and early 2015, we made the assessment that there was no other option than to increase the pace of repo rate cuts to clarify that the focus was entirely on inflation. Accordingly there was no longer any scope to use the repo rate to attempt to influence debts and housing prices. In this respect too, the Riksbank has been a forerunner in the world of central banking, albeit unintentionally. As far as I know, no other central bank applying a policy that uses its interest rate to counteract the build-up of financial imbalances, such as Norges Bank, has had to make such a clear and important choice. Having said this, I now also see more fundamental problems with a monetary policy that leans against the wind, even when there is confidence in the inflation target. I will return to this at the end of this speech. Consequently, my interpretation of Sweden’s experiences so far is that a policy that leans against the wind has its limitations. For example, it seems, at least under certain circumstances, that the policy rate would have to be set quite a lot higher to effectively dampen the increase of debt. But such a policy could slow down the economy as a whole quite seriously and risk leading to inflation falling significantly below target for a long period.

The total population of Africa is projected to reach 1,941 million by the year 2050, from approximately 885 million in 2004 (Ashford, 2004). According to statistics collected by UN-Habitat 2002 and UN 2002, they indicate that out of a world total of 923,986 thousand urban slum dwellers, 869,918 thousand (94.1%) were from developing countries, with Africa accounting for 187,563 thousand or 20% (UNDP, 2003). It is important for local governments to ensure adequate planning policies in order to accommodate the predicted rising population. Local governments must also ensure the implementation of effective policies meant to regulate the activities arising from globalisation on the African economy such as the expansion in the number of urban industries, and the need for land for cultivating commercial crops, as well as to support the need for increased areas of subsistence farming. Another fundamental aspect that needs urgent attention is the issue of collecting more accurate data on environmental pollution and degradation and related statistics on the environment. Items such as farming methods employed, the pace of clearing of land for settlements, and charcoal burning, are presently not included in existing statistics. Appropriate measurements will provide a more precise indicator of the weight and quantitative value of negative environmental externalities on economic development in Africa. Chinese policy makers have now adopted the use of “green GDP” (The Economist, August 21st 2004), which takes into account the environmental costs on economic development.
In addition, as the returns in Islamic banking are uncertain and can only be ascertained on an ex-post basis, well-developed IT systems would be necessary to enable Islamic banking institutions to make projections on future returns so as to reduce the degree of uncertainty in the returns to be paid to the depositors. This would also strengthen the potential competitiveness of the Islamic financial services industry. Another facet to risk management is the need for the Islamic banking industry to develop a derivatives market. In the current increasingly uncertain global financial environment, investors need to be in a position to mitigate and manage these emerging new risks. Islamic banking institutions, in particular, have to a large extent long-term assets which include long-term Islamic housing mortgages and Islamic financial instruments, that are funded by short-term deposits, thus giving rise to a maturity mismatch between the assets and liabilities. There is therefore a need for the development of a broader range of Islamic financial market instruments to provide the industry with effective risk mitigating instruments. In addition to the derivatives market, the Islamic financial system also needs deeper and more efficient money and capital markets to facilitate sound asset and liability, and liquidity management by Islamic financial institutions. In this regard, Bank Negara Malaysia will issue Sukuk al-Ijarah, to meet the requirements of participants in the Islamic money market.

As we advance forward, changes in the financial landscape will continue to accelerate and the level of complexity and sophistication in the financial markets will further intensify. Islamic banking institutions will need to reinvent themselves to meet the emerging issues, challenges and opportunities. The regulatory and supervisory approach and the methodologies to be applied must continue to evolve in order to remain effective and relevant. In addition, given the global dimension of the Islamic financial products and services, and the increasing interdependence of financial markets, efforts by individual countries to strengthen risk management practices needs to be matched by efforts to enhance the safeguards at the international level. The future prospect of the Islamic banking industry thus depends on the combined cumulative efforts by the industry, regulators, the market participants and the international community. The collective efforts needs to be coordinated to maximise the potential of the industry. Setting shared vision and common goals to be achieved would be an important first step. Of greater importance are the actions that needs to be taken to realise these goals. It will be the actions and initiatives which we take today that will contribute towards achieving the future that we aspire. On this note, I wish you a successful and productive conference. Thank you. 4  BIS Review 8/2006