samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This is also being driven by the growing demand for finance by both public and private investors in this sector. In the recent past for instance, a private leasing company received structured finance of $ million (or approximately K38 billion at today’s exchange rate) while the Development Bank of Zambia also issued a corporate bond of K68 billion (which is just under $ Increased participation in both the money and capital markets by non-bank financial institutions with proposals for issuance of other corporate bonds are also under current consideration. Mr Chairman, some of the key sectors with potential investment include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, tourism and energy. Mr. Chairman, given all these developments which I have cited, one can tell that there are enormous possibilities for the financial sector in Zambia. In this regard, our expectation, at the Bank of Zambia, is that the financial sector should take a leading role in facilitating further developments in the areas which I have discussed. However, during our interactions, key players in the financial sector have informed us that they have a limited capacity to provide the required services in this regard. This forum has therefore been organized and arranged by the Bank of Zambia to bring together Zambian financial sector players and international financial players who have an interest to see that Zambia takes its rightful place in the world economy.

BIS Review 150/2007  1  The financial sector weaknesses are being addressed through a public and private sector partnership. The implementation structure is chaired by the Secretary to the Treasury at Ministry of Finance and National Planning with the secretariat function responsible for the coordination of activities based at the Bank of Zambia. Mr Chairman, the goal of the FSDP is to have a financial system that is stable and marketbased in order to support efficient resource mobilization necessary for economic diversification and sustainable growth. A number of reforms have already been undertaken under this plan. For instance, a Credit Reference Bureau has been established and we expect it to be operational in the coming year. In addition, studies have also been taken to comprehend the constraints to broader access financial services. One of the outputs of the FSDP has been a market knowledge study called Finscope Zambia which is a nationally representative survey of the use of, and demand for, financial services. It provides insights into how consumers source their income and manage their financial lives. This is the first time a survey like this has been conducted in Zambia and provides valuable information for players in the financial market. The survey, which was conducted in 2005, notes that very few Zambians use the formal financial sector. The report reveals that most Zambians prefer to invest in non-financial instruments such as a business, livestock, land or agriculture equipment.
I think the consensus at present, as reflected in the recent discussion at the LegCo Financial Affairs Panel, is that neither the current volume and nature of complaints nor the deficiencies in existing arrangements would justify the creation of such elaborate machinery. The second option would be to give the HKMA a clear mandate to arbitrate and resolve consumer complaints and the powers to impose sanctions. This option could go some way towards addressing the current gap between the expectation of bank customers and what the HKMA can do for them under its existing powers. However, I think there is a consensus that this is not the right time for the  BIS Review 39/2002  3  HKMA to be given such a role. It would require a considerable increase in resources and some form of cost recovery from the banking industry, and it would also require addressing concerns about conflict of interest between different branches of the organisation - a problem that is not insoluble, but which would nevertheless require some careful thought. This, at least for the time being, does not seem to be the preferred option. The weight of opinion seems, then, to fall on the third option, which is to rely mainly on the industry itself to ensure that complaints are properly handled. There are three things which banks can do in helping to promote self-regulation: •  First, AIs should strictly follow the Code of Banking Practice, which is issued by their own industry associations.

Yields on bonds with high credit ratings are also very low in Switzerland. At the beginning of June, ten-year Confederation bonds attained a new all-time low, at around 0.5%. Thirty-year bonds were trading in the market at yields of under 1%. For short to medium-term maturities, yields were in negative territory, in some cases very negative. The low interest rates continue to be reflected in robust growth in lending and rising real estate prices. As a result, the imbalances on the Swiss residential mortgage and real estate markets have increased further. Following my presentation, my colleague Jean-Pierre Danthine will take a closer look at the risks for financial stability in connection with the mortgage and real estate markets. SNB monetary policy Let us now return to the SNB’s monetary policy. The debt problems in some euro area countries have deteriorated seriously over the recent period. Accordingly, the euro has lost value against most countries since May. This has led to increased upward pressure on the EUR/CHF exchange rate. Even in this difficult environment, we have consistently enforced the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. To defend the minimum exchange rate, we purchased foreign currency. This has led to a further expansion in Swiss franc liquidity and the SNB balance sheet. Even when the minimum exchange rate was first introduced, we drew attention to the fact that its enforcement could have significant consequences for our balance sheet.
2  See, for instance, Eggertsson, G. and P. Krugman, “Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity Trap”, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Working Paper, February 2011 and Mian, A., K. Rao and A. Sufi, “Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump”, Chicago Booth Working paper, November 2011. 3  See, for instance, Eichengreen, B., R. Rajan and E. Prasad, “Central banks need a bigger and bolder mandate”, Financial Times, 24 October 2011. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  there is then a risk that both will become unclear. The outcome may also be poorer and it may be more difficult to hold policymakers accountable.4 The problems are exaggerated by those who believe that both types of policy must be coordinated… I can understand both points of view, but I believe that both have exaggerated their arguments somewhat. Those who say that monetary policy and financial stability policy should be integrated to a greater extent sometimes give the impression that they believe the central bank should at every monetary policy meeting both determine the policy rate and activate a number of macroprudential supervisory levers to find a policy mix that is appropriate for both monetary policy and financial stability. I do not believe that this is the way things will be done – I believe that this way of thinking is too coloured by recent events. After all, it is not as though problems arise from overgenerous credit granting during every economic cycle. Most cycles are ”normal”, with no financial imbalances or balance-sheet problems.

Yellow indicates normal conditions. Includes bank and non-bank credit. BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  Chart 9: Term premia have been a significant driver of the decline in yields Change in expected policy rates Change in term premia Change in nominal interest rates  Basis 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90  UK Source: Bank calculations  Chart shows estimates of contribution to change in 10-year government bond yields between end July 2014 and end April 2015. Derived using the model described in Malik, S and Meldrum A (2014)  Chart 10: Central banks will purchase around $ per month (on average)until September 2016. Monthly flow of G4 Central Bank Asset Purchases (6-month moving average, $  250 200 150 100 50 0  2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Euro Area  Japan  US  UK  Total  Sources: BoE, Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, ECB, DataStream Asset purchases have been converted to $ using $ per pound, $ per euro, and 120 yen per $  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches
There is still a rationale for central banks to hold gold. 2. Gold selling  After having listed all the good reasons for holding gold, you will not be surprised if I reiterate that we have no plans to sell gold! The leading official holders of gold have not changed their attitude in this respect. Neither the American Federal Reserve System, nor the German Bundesbank, nor the Bank of Italy, nor the Banque de France have any plan to sell gold. 3. Gold lending  Concerning gold lending, the Banque de France, as most of you probably know, is definitely not among the active players in the market. Quite the contrary, alongside the other major holders, it has refrained from an active management of its gold holdings. The Banque de France has always adopted a very prudent and rather conservative approach, acknowledging the fact that the issue of gold lending is a matter of common interest to the major holders. Two main reasons are traditionally put forward to justify gold lending: –  The first one refers to a question of principle. Foreign currency assets are actively managed. Why not extend this management to gold insofar as gold is considered to be part of a country’s external reserves? –  The second reason is that central banks obviously have to take into account profit and loss account considerations. From this standpoint, gold should provide a return just like other assets.

European firms were lagging behind US firms in terms of foreign direct investment and they are now catching up. European firms have entered a “globalisation process” whereby they aim to reach a global size through acquisitions. BIS Review 61/2000  6  Conclusion Allow me to conclude. The euro area has adopted a sound macroeconomic policy and has embarked upon a fairly comprehensive programme of structural reforms. These reforms will still take time to be fully completed. But they are well underway and have already boosted economic growth, job creation and corporate restructuring. This move has been triggered by the creation of a monetary union and a vast unified financial market. I am impressed by what has been achieved during the past years and the National Central Banks as well as the ECB are strongly encouraging governments and businesses to foster structural reforms in the future. The euro exchange rate is clearly misaligned relative to euro area fundamentals (robust domestic growth, steady implementation of the single market, abundant domestic savings, healthy external accounts). This is the reason why we consider that the euro has a strong potential for appreciation. The Eurosystem, which is the guardian of the euro on behalf of the people of Europe, knows that our fellow citizens want the single currency to be at least as solid as their previous national currencies. In France, to give but one example, 96% of the population want the euro to be at least as solid as the franc.
Accompanying these changes has been the prevalence of abundant liquidity in the global financial markets, resulting in an intensified search for higher yields. These trends are encouraging flows into the capital markets of emerging economies, presenting new opportunities for wholesale banking and capital market related financial services. These flows, however, also pose potential risks of reversals in financial market conditions. This increases the need to ensure that we have the capacity to absorb or adjust to changing financial flows. A second significant trend shaping the future financial landscape is the intensification of regional economic and financial integration. Economic integration through trade is already well-advanced in Asia, with the share of intra-regional trade already more than half of the total trade in Asia . More recently, however, greater financial integration at the regional level has been an important development, bringing complementary and mutually-reinforcing benefits to the economies in the region. Intra-regional investments among the Asian economies have increased with an accompanying rise in cross-border financing activities. There has already been an increase in cross-border mergers and acquisition activity among Asian financial institutions in order to reap emerging opportunities. The transformation in the financial landscape in the current environment has not been confined to the Asian region but has also involved growing ties with other emerging regions. Of significance is the rising trend of trade and financial linkages between Asia and the Middle East and other parts of the world. Malaysian banks now have the capacity to take advantage of these trends.

It is also important that the central bank, even if it does not have direct supervisory responsibilities, closely monitors general financial market developments, including in the major institutions, to detect potential crisis situations that may call for ELA. The traditional view that ELA should never be given to insolvent banks can also be discussed from another perspective. A prerequisite for all kinds of support, including ELA, should be that there is considerable risk for a systemic crisis. Given that, it can be discussed whether it is worse to provide ELA to an insolvent institution, or to refrain from an action that could avoid a systemic crisis. If there is a risk of systemic crisis, it is normally determined that public support even to insolvent institutions may be warranted, but this is normally given by the government through the fiscal budget, not by the central bank. The moral hazard aspects, which are common arguments for not providing ELA to insolvent institutions, will be no different if the central bank provides support or if the government does. The central bank may have a better capability than other authorities to provide financial support if the need arises very quickly. The main reason for this is that the central bank has the instruments for lending available and it has resources in its balance sheet or the credibility to get resources if they are needed (for example in foreign currency).
Admittedly, depreciation of CEE currencies has hardly been an issue in the recent past; the currencies in the region have either stable exchange rates (when these are pegged) or tend to appreciate (when the exchange rate regime allows it). However, concerns remain that under such conditions, domestic monetary policy cannot  7  Égert, B., Mihaljek, D.: Determinants of House Prices in Central and Eastern Europe, BIS Working Paper No. 236, September 2007. 8  Zajączkowski, S., Żochowski, D.: Housing Loans Growth, Foreign Currency Risk and Supervisory Response: the Polish Case, mimeo, November 2007. 9  Brzoza-Brzezina, M., Chmielewski, T., Niedźwiedziska, J.: Substitution between Domestic and Foreign Currency Loans in Central Europe, mimeo, November 2007. BIS Review 137/2007  3  effectively control the growth of credit due to the substitution effect: monetary tightening at home does not lead to a slowdown of total credit growth, but rather to increased foreign currency indebtedness. The analysis in the paper has identified the existence of this effect in the case of three largest CEE economies. Generally, most papers presented and discussed over the last two days have stressed the necessity of prudential supervision of the banking system in the face of a credit boom. Even though financial deepening and capital inflows bring about long-term benefits that can hardly be overstated, in the short to medium run they can lead to imbalances and distortions that pose a threat to the macroeconomic stability of a country.

Krzysztof Rybiński: Rapid credit growth in converging economies – the challenges ahead Closing remarks by Mr Krzysztof Rybiński, Deputy President of the National Bank of Poland, at the National Bank of Poland International Conference of Central Bankers and Economic Educators “Monetary Policy Challenges Resulting from the Rapid Credit Growth in Converging Economies”, Warsaw, 23 November 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, We have now come to the end of the conference on “Monetary Policy Challenges Resulting from the Rapid Credit Growth in Converging Economies”, and it is my honour to provide some concluding remarks. Over the last two days, we have been discussing opportunities, challenges and problems related to the rapid credit expansion in Central and East European (hereafter: CEE) economies that find themselves in a convergence process towards more advanced EU member states. In the following, let me briefly summarize the main conclusions that emerge from all the presentations and discussions. Before I proceed, I would like to thank you all for attending this conference, especially the speakers and discussants for their valuable contributions. Most of all, I would like to thank central bank governors from our region: Ms Júlia Király, Deputy Governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Mr Andres Sutt, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Estonia, Mr Sławomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of Poland, and Mr Zdeněk Tůma, Governor of the Czech National Bank, for enriching this conference with their presence and their views.
It is our earnest aspiration that the entry of ING Public Takaful Ehsan will further add to the dynamism and vigour of the takaful industry. With this strategic alliance between 2 financial groups of such calibre, Bank Negara Malaysia looks forward to strong management stewardship, innovative product offerings, wide distribution channels, operational and service excellence as well as breakthrough business strategies that are well-matched by robust risk management capabilities. I am confident that ING Public Takaful Ehsan will benefit greatly from the synergies and complementary strengths of its shareholders, by drawing upon the combined wealth of market experience, technical underwriting expertise, multi-channel distribution network and infrastructure, to successfully make its mark as one of the leading takaful operator, both domestically and on the global front. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  In the pursuit to seize the growing business opportunities in the increasingly competitive environment, building a pool of highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce must remain a strategic priority for takaful operators. As a knowledge-intensive industry, human capital can indeed be a potent weapon of competitive advantage for the industry. As the industry seeks to achieve a higher level of competitiveness, increased product complexity, business sophistication, service excellence and the global nature of competition are all demanding greater depth and breadth of leadership, knowledge, competence and skills of industry professionals. Adding to the demands for increased organisational capabilities is the changing regulatory landscape towards risk-based capital, soon-to-be implemented for the Malaysian takaful industry, which places greater prominence on strong risk management culture.

The industry experienced a compound average growth rate of 27 percent in terms of net contributions between 2005–2010, with family takaful driving the growth at 28 percent for the same period, to dominate more than 80 percent of the total takaful market in 2010. The strong growth momentum is expected to continue, underpinned by the rising affluence of Malaysian amidst strong economic fundamentals. Given the large untapped market that still exists with only 54 percent of the population having a life insurance or family takaful policy, the takaful industry is poised to benefit in the years ahead. Today’s launch is thus an important step in our overall strategy to further elevate the growth and development of the takaful industry. ING Public Takaful Ehsan is the 3rd licensee to launch out of the 4 family takaful licences awarded recently, making up to a total of 11 takaful players now operating in Malaysia. The initiative for strengthening competition in takaful industry is premised on our quest to unlock the enormous growth potential that lie ahead. There are 3 dimensions from which strong opportunities for growth can be harnessed in the takaful industry. First, is the opportunity to penetrate the remaining underserved areas in family takaful. One such area is medical and health, which in 2010 constitutes only 9 percent of new family takaful business.
It will wish to take time to reflect carefully on the Report before expressing a view. 4  BIS Review 32/2009  Given what has happened there is now international support for developing a counter-cyclical toolkit for the prudential supervision of banks. But let us be clear what such tools would have entailed had they operated in the past. They would have imposed constraints on the growth and profitability of bank balance sheets. They would have been seen as a tax on the success of the investment banking community and the City of London more generally. And that would have taken place at a time when virtually the entire weight of opinion, not only in this country but also abroad, was in favour of the expansion of financial services. Indeed, just before the financial turmoil broke out in the summer of 2007, there was a debate in New York about the need to follow London’s example of unfettered markets if they were not to lose ground. What are the lessons for central banks? With the passage of the new Banking Act last month, the Bank of England now has two objectives enshrined in statute: monetary stability and financial stability. Events of the past six months show that there are limits to what can be achieved in respect of either objective. No policy framework can, or should be expected to, stabilise output when demand in the rest of the world suddenly and simultaneously “falls off a cliff”, to use the expression heard so often in recent months.

2  See for instance Már Guðmundsson and Thorsteinn Thorgeirsson, “The Fault Lines in Cross-Border Banking: Lessons from the Icelandic Case” SUERF Studies 05/2010, European Money and Finance Forum (2010); Már Guðmundsson, Keynote address at the Eighth High-Level Meeting for the Middle East & North Africa Region: Recent Policy Developments for Strengthening the Resilience of the Financial Sector, Abu Dhabi, 28 November 2012. www.cb.is; and Már Guðmundsson‘s speech at the IIEA conference in Dublin, Ireland, “Iceland‘s crisis and recovery: facts, comparisons, and the lessons learned”, 27 April 2015. www.cb.is. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Let me conclude by telling you what we are contemplating in Iceland in this regard, as this issue is very much on the agenda as we prepare to lift the comprehensive controls on capital outflows that were introduced at the peak of the crisis. We will work through all of the avenues that I have just mentioned, and many of the reforms have already been implemented. What I call IT-plus – or plus-plus – will replace IT of the precrisis type. A managed float has already taken the place of the free float. Foreign exchange intervention is thus used to reduce excess volatility in the FX market and lean against capital flow cycles. The financial stability framework has been strengthened, and macroprudential tools are being developed that should mitigate adverse interactions between capital flows, on the one hand, and domestic credit growth and asset prices, on the other. Foreign currency borrowing by unhedged domestic agents will be very much restricted.