samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Furthermore, a limit will be enforced on the amount of assets issued by entities with a high carbon footprint that can be pledged as collateral when borrowing from the Eurosystem. The assessment of financial risks for private actors will see an active involvement of the Eurosystem. To ensure that the economy remains resilient during the transition to net zero, the Eurosystem is stress-testing euro area banks for climate-related events. Banks’ level of preparedness will be evaluated and, were deficiencies to emerge, recommendations will be issued to strengthen banks’ climate frameworks. The results of the ECB’s 2022 Climate Stress Tests (CST) showed that banks have started to integrate climate risk into their stress-testing frameworks, although most institutions are still at a very early stage when it comes to factoring climate risk factors into their credit risk models. (SSM Climate stress test report). When it comes to the Maltese economy, the Central Bank of Malta has made a first attempt at quantifying the exposure of the domestic financial system to sectors of economic activity that may be affected by transition to clean sources of energy. In a nutshell, as of June 2021 just over 23% of the domestic banking sector’s lending was directed towards sectors identified to be high carbon dioxide (CO2) intensive (such as energy, construction and transportation and storage), while an additional 27.7% was issued towards mid CO2 intensive 5  sectors (mostly services).

Introductory Speech by Prof. Edward Scicluna Governor of the Central Bank of Malta The Institute of Financial Services annual’s seminar: “The ESG Journey: a Pulse Check for the Maltese Economy”. St Julian’s, Malta 11 November 2022 Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning I would like to thank the Institute of Financial Services and in particular its President Kenneth Micallef, for their kind invitation to address this distinguished audience. It is becoming increasing apparent that climate change is one of the greatest, and most immediate, threats faced by mankind. So I do not need many explanations why today I shall put the emphasis on the “E” of ESG, namely on the environment and on the fundamental transformations that lie in front of us. This is not to underestimate the role of the Social and the Governance  elements: matters of inclusiveness, labour relations, equality and the conduct of public and private institutions are proof that sustainability extends well beyond the environmental question. But Global temperatures are rising – 2010s was the warmest decade on record and extreme weather events have doubled compared to forty years ago. Decades of scientific research have established that greenhouse emissions associated with human activity are behind climate change. 1  Only a coordinated international endeavour can deliver the necessary shift away from fossil fuels. This urgency led 196 parties to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit the increase in global temperatures.
PE/VC assets under management have risen by a compounded annual growth rate of 22% over the last five years, to reach nearly $ trillion in 20182. Within the Asia-Pacific, ASEAN is emerging as a hotbed of PE and VC deal flow. 2017 PE and VC investments into ASEAN was $ billion, almost three times the deal flow in 20163 . Bain & Company estimates at least $ billion of PE and VC deals and more than ten unicorns emerging over the next five years in Southeast Asia. The optimism is not unfounded. There is an explosion of entrepreneurial energy across ASEAN. 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  The region has seen the rapid rise of well capitalized, innovative businesses such as Grab, Go-Jek, and Tokopedia. With a growing middle class and widespread urbanisation, the consumer, technology, and health care related sectors are expected to grow rapidly in ASEAN. Growth companies in these areas are scaling up and internationalising, which requires raising new capital – with a growing volume coming from private markets. Singapore is a natural gateway to private market opportunities in Asia. Singapore has a diverse ecosystem of 240 global and regional PE and VC managers. They managed $ billion of assets as of 2018, up 15% from the year before. Entrepreneurs from across Asia are coming to Singapore to raise capital for their expansion. Singapore itself has become a thriving launch pad for tech start-ups, and is a natural hunting ground for the next unicorn.

Fourth, MAS is partnering Enterprise Singapore to host “Deal Fridays” – which are basically curated events to match emerging growth companies with investors seeking private market opportunities. Deal Fridays began last month and will take place every Friday until the Singapore FinTech Festival cum Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology in November. 3/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  Last year, MAS surveyed angel investors, family offices, and venture capitalists to try to get a sense of how much money is potentially on the table. By their own account, there is about $ billion in total available for direct investment into ASEAN start-ups during 2019-21. We hope that Deal Fridays can encourage the deployment of this capital. Sleeping Well: Investing for Retirement with Ageing Demographics Next, sleeping well – or securing sufficient funds for retirement. Safe investment is needed for retirement planning, as the world’s population ages. Populations are ageing across most countries. 2018 was a milestone of sorts: for the first time in human history, persons aged 65 or over outnumbered children under 5 years of age. The rate of demographic ageing will be particularly rapid in Asia. The proportion aged 65 or over in East and Southeast Asia is expected to increase from 11% in 2019 to 24% in 20504 . As people live longer and the workforce shrinks, individuals will face an uphill struggle to fund longer retirements. Retirement planning should thus start young. Starting early gives you more time to reap the benefits of compounding interest.
Comparatively, however, we are ahead in the region as 51 per cent of about 89 million farm households in India have no access to formal or informal sources of credit while 73 per cent have no access to formal sources of credit. Although both in India and Sri Lanka, the shares of noninstitutional sources of credit have decreased compared to the 1970’s and 1980’s, there still remains a significant gap in accessing the formal financial sector by men and women in rural areas and the unemployed in the urban areas. Among many reasons for financial exclusion of women from the formal system, however, literacy barriers and language barriers are becoming less important factors. It is primarily the approach of banks and financial institutions and the strenuous processes and procedures adopted by them, which matters more in financial exclusion. The second important area of financial exclusion is the denial of access to efficient and safe payment systems. This area of activity is unknown to many and it has been taken for granted. Among the main payment instruments, cash is straightforward. However, the other payment instruments, such as cheques, bank drafts, electronic payments, card payments etc., can have delays in both clearing and settlement, which can cause problems to those who receive money through these payment modes. This is common to both men and women.

In this context, despite high volatility of consumer prices and exchange rates in trading partners, including the sharp decline in oil prices in the second half of 2008 (one of the main fundamentals in Algeria’s economy), the REER has remained near its equilibrium level and the external financial position remains comfortable. 4  BIS Review 168/2009
On the other hand, the pro-cyclicality and highly volatile nature of capital flows poses significant macroeconomic management challenges to policymakers. If not properly managed, the build-up of excesses amid strong capital inflows and the subsequent bursting of the bubbles could be detrimental to financial stability, wreaking havoc on economic growth. 3. Managing capital flows has been a dynamic learning process for policymakers in developing economies. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, Asian economies embraced capital flows with little wariness of the downside risks. The dominant flow pattern at that time was for Asian governments to invest their savings in high-grade government papers of the advanced economies. The funds were then recycled back to Asia in the form of highly volatile shortterm capital flows. These resulted in serious imbalances in the balance of payments accounts, and mismatches in currency and maturity in the balance sheets of banks. The subsequent shifts in market sentiment and expectations led to abrupt reversals of capital flows out of Asia. Currency crashes amplified the adverse effects as capital fled the region in a drove. The Asian Miracle went bust. The capital flows that had once fertilised the impressive growth eventually caused a capsize when the Asian financial crisis hit us in 1997 – a lesson that we all still vividly remember. 4. The Asian financial crisis gave us a much-needed wakeup call at a dear price.

BIS Review 159/2010  7  Recent data suggest that the recovery in domestic demand is slightly stronger than expected and that a more moderate growth process was assumed in the second half of the year. Indicators pertaining to private sector demand indicate that private sector consumption and investments continued to rise rapidly in the third quarter in annual terms (Figure 21). Consumption and investment expenditures are likely to accelerate in the final quarter of the year with the support of the counter-cyclical stance of monetary and fiscal policies as well as strengthening capital inflows. The steady rise in credits confirms continuing recovery in economic activity (Figure 22). Another noteworthy point about this period is that credit expansion continues to extend across a greater part of our economy in terms of both sectors and scale. Low interest rates and easing credit risk indicators suggest that credit growth will be strong, and therefore, the credit channel should continue to underpin domestic demand over the forthcoming period. 8  BIS Review 159/2010  As supply-side constraints have widely subsided, we believe that credit realizations rather reflect the dynamics pertaining to credit demand. The Loans Tendency Survey suggests that the borrowing motivation of firms tends to change in the post-crisis period. Firms used to demand credits to facilitate debt rollover or to finance their working capital during the crisis. However, as the effects of the crisis tapered off, loans for rolling over debts decreased while loans for investment purposes increased (Figure 23).
In the October Inflation Report the Riksbank made the assessment that the labour market would be austere in future, which would result in wage increases of approximately 4 per cent over the next two years. The forecast took into account the fact that the shortage in local authorities and county councils could lead to higher wage increases in these sectors than in trade and industry. However, the strained economic situation in many local authorities and county councils limits the scope for wage increases. 8  The National Agency for Education (2002), Barnomsorg, skola och vuxenutbildning i siffror (Childcare, schools and adult education in figures). 9  Statistics Sweden's structural wages statistics. 10  Swedish National Labour Market Administration (AMS) (2002), Den framtida personalförsörjningen inom vård och omsorg tillgång och rekryteringsbehov till år 2015 (Future personnel supply in health and welfare - Supply and recruitment needs up to the year 2015), Ura 2002:3. 11  The Swedish Association of Local Authorities, "Personalen i fokus 2000" (Personnel in focus 2000), 2001. 12  Statistics Sweden's structural wages statistics. 13  Statistics Sweden. 6  BIS Review 63/2002  During 2001 productivity growth was very weak, but so far this year productivity has developed relatively strongly. The rate of increase is expected to be somewhat subdued over the coming two years as an increase in demand occupies a larger percentage of companies' resources. Unit labour costs are therefore expected to be halved next year compared with last year, which should check domestic inflation.

I have to say that this is not an undisputed statement, because I told this story at a general business event and someone took me to task that every member of an insurance board should be fluent in the theory of a Copula. To be clear, we do not expect Copula fluency for all. But the moral of the story is that there is not a strong consensus on how to set the expectations of Boards so that they can perform their role. We may at times have gone too far in the direction of individual technical knowledge, and by the way it was the Copula story and others that convinced me to stop interviewing people taking up standard NED positions. The PRA has close contact with many Boards, so as supervisors what do we expect of Boards? Three things stand out for me:1.  we expect Boards to exercise good judgment in overseeing the running of the firm and to do so on a forward-looking basis;  2.  that judgement is improved by good constructive challenge from Non-Executives. A firm’s culture should promote discussion, debate and honest challenge.
The reality during this period was that everyone was tempted to grab as much as they could while the going was good, because they knew it would not last. But we have learned from that experience. We’ve learned that in anything other than the short term there really is no trade-off between growth and inflation. What we are trying to do now through monetary policy is to keep overall demand in the economy growing continuously broadly in line with the supply-side capacity of the economy – as a whole – to meet that demand. Both the previous Government and the present one set a low inflation target as the immediate objective of monetary policy, not as an end in itself, but in effect as a barometer of our success in keeping demand in line with supply. So the real aim of monetary policy these days is to achieve stability across the economy as a whole in this much wider sense. Now, there is not a lot, frankly, that we can do, directly through monetary policy, to affect the supply side – the underlying rate of growth that can be sustained without causing inflation to rise. That depends ultimately on the ingenuity, the productivity, and the flexibility, of the economy, though it can, of course, be influenced by the whole raft of Government policies, ranging from education and health, through taxation and social security, to the balance between regulation in all its forms, including regulation of the labour market, and productive efficiency.

The exchange rate has, in fact, tended gradually to soften since last spring when the decision to go ahead with the euro was finally confirmed; but increasingly since the autumn the internationally-exposed sectors of the economy have been dealt a further massive blow as a result of global economic turbulence. This started, in fact, with the financial disturbances in Asia in the latter half of 1997, but even as late as the beginning of last summer it seemed as if it might have only limited impact on the overall world economy. The IMF, for example, was then still projecting 3-3¾% world growth in 1998 and 1999 respectively, which was certainly a setback compared with their forecast of over 4% just six months before, but it was hardly catastrophic. Since last summer it has become increasingly clear that things are likely to be significantly worse than that. The financial collapse in Russia, deepening recession in Japan, the long battle – then sudden defeat – in Brazil to hold its exchange rate, and fluctuating fears of possible knock-on effects on the major countries’ financial markets, all contributed to an increased sense of financial fragility, which has not been easy to contain, though I am now hopeful that we will be able to stop the financial rot.
I am particularly delighted that this seminar will address the need to “match products to user needs”. This is indeed key to the success of any service oriented industry and therefore inevitable in meeting the needs of a growing economy such as ours. Without overemphasizing this point, I would like to implore you to ensure that you develop products suitable to your clients as a good and useful product is only one that meets the needs of the market. As I have already noted, on its part the Government is committed to resolving the various constraints identified in the country’s financial system through implemention of the FSDP and related initiatives. Key among the strategies includes the development of appropriate regulations and improving the capital adequacy base for the leasing and finance companies. Adequate capitalization of commercial banks and financial institutions is important if there is to be stability in the financial sector. It is for this reason that the Bank of Zambia, effective January 2007, increased the minimum paid-up capital for commercial banks from K2 billion to K12 billion. In the same vein, the start-up capital for the deposit taking leasing institutions was increased to K1.5 billion from K250 million. I wish to urge all leasing companies to make sure that they take steps to meet the required minimum capital. Let me conclude by paying tribute to the organisers of this seminar, Sapitwa Finance.

Mr Chairman, learning from others, some of the obstacles facing the leasing companies, include inability to attract funding and lack of adequate leasing expertise, can be overcome through formation of synergies and partnership with other industry players. I understand in the USA, for example, over 70% of leases are actually written through lease intermediary companies or brokers, who use their specialised skills to structure lease transactions in the best way possible for the benefit of both the lessee and the lease underwriter. Lease syndications and funding partnerships with bigger players should also be encouraged as these help to spread risk and reduce pressures on balance sheets of individual leasing companies. Ladies and Gentlemen, you will agree with me that there is vast untapped potential of leasing activities in this country. There is need to develop this line of business further. A developed leasing sector is characterized by a diverse range of financial services that include factoring and trade finance, term lending, corporate finance and investment advisory services, and corporate restructuring, treasury management as well as traditional leasing activities. But this is not the case in Zambia at  2  BIS Review 17/2007  present. Currently, the leasing sector is restricted primarily to the traditional leasing activities. This seminar has thus come at the right time, as the lessons learnt are vital to complement the Government’s efforts not only to develop the leasing sector, but the financial sector as a whole.
The nature of these price hikes is purely international, or related to weather, making them unavoidable from the point of view of monetary authorities. However, their potential propagation to other prices and wages through what we normally call second-round effects gives monetary policy an important role even in the presence of these specific external price shocks. Given the nature of the shock, driven to a large extent by biofuel production and food demand in fast-growing Asian countries, the shock is likely to persist for a long time. Some  5  Truman (2003), Hyvonen (2004) and Vega and Winkelried (2005), among others. Ball and Sheridan (2005) show that the available evidence does not support this conclusion for developed economies. Mishkin and Schmidt-Hebbel (2007) corroborate this differentiated benefit, and conclude that the winners are emerging economies and converging-to-target ITers. Still, they conclude that the choice of the control group is key for finding any effect of IT on inflation. 6  De Gregorio et al. (2007) and Blanchard and Gali (2007) show evidence supporting these views. 4  BIS Review 74/2008  second-round effects are bound to happen, since price and wage formation always have some degree of inertia. The role of monetary policy is to ensure that the adjustment of relative prices occurs without a persistent increase in inflation, that is, beyond normal dynamics. Put differently, monetary policy must guarantee that the dynamic of prices is consistent with convergence of inflation to its objective, within the time horizon envisioned in the inflation target regime.

BIS Review 74/2008  9  Figure 5: Food prices (index, January 2006 = 100)  600  600  500  500  400  400  300  300  200  200  100  100  0  0 48  54 60  66 72 78  84 90  96 02  08  CRB Sp o t Ind ex  CRB Fats & Oils Sub -ind ex  CRB Fo o d s tuffs Sub -ind ex  Reuters -CRB Grains and Oils eed s Sub -ind ex  Sources: Commodity Research Bureau, Reuters and Bloomberg. Figure 6: Inflation: Food, energy and rest (annual change, percent) Food and energy  Non food and energy  25  25  25  25  20  20  20  20  15  15  15  15  10  10  10  10  5  5  5  5  0  0  0  0  -5  -5  -5  -5  -10  -10 -10  -10 00  01  02 U.S.  03 Euro Zone  04 Japan  05  06 Mexico  07 Chile  08  00  01  02  U.S.  03  Euro Zone  04  Japan  05  06  Mexico  07  Chile  08  Source: Central Banks and Bloomberg  10  BIS Review 74/2008
It should also be seen as a complement to regulatory reforms that will improve market discipline in other segments of the banks’ liability structure, such as capital buffers and the new bail-in rules for senior bond-holders and uninsured depositors. And since bail-in rules have confirmed that insured depositors are protected by deposit guarantee schemes, meaning by the taxpayer, the banking supervisor is the public authority to whom insured depositors delegate the monitoring of bank behaviour – hence the need for strong banking supervision, free of national political influence.18 Liquidity regulation and lender of last resort Finally, let me turn to the interplay between the ex ante regulation of liquidity ratios and the ex post provision of liquidity assistance in time of stress by the central banks. Walter Bagehot famously advocated that a lender of last resort in a crisis should lend freely at a penalty rate to solvent but illiquid banks that have adequate collateral.19 Such intervention is seen as the primary method for mitigating the adverse systemic effects of a liquidity crisis, providing stability to the banking system and avoiding unfavourable consequences for the real sector.

The question is: how much is too much, to the point where it would allow banks to sustain flawed business models? Work is being carried out further on the interaction between the LCR and central bank facilities so as to ensure that the LCR responds appropriately to the provision and withdrawal of liquidity support by central banks. In this context, it has been proposed that central banks provide a “Committed Liquidity Facility” (CLF) to banks faced with a scarcity of HQLA. Under a CLF, the capacity to borrow from the central bank counts towards HQLA, with banks paying an upfront fee for a determined amount of CLF commitment. The CLF can potentially be useful not only in jurisdictions with a structural scarcity of HQLA, like for example Australia. The argument put forward is that banks in crisis times, wary of stigma effects, would not let their LCR ratio fall below 100 percent. A CLF, however, would allow banks to meet the LCR ratio at all times, although with time-varying reliance on privatemarket HQLA and on the CLF. One possibility would be for the central bank to encourage the drawdown of private-market HQLA by reducing the pricing of the CLF during crisis time. I would agree with Jeremy Stein13 that a CLF with an upfront fee is very different from counting central-bank eligible collateral as HQLA at no cost, which could weaken the incentive to borrow in markets and create excessive reliance on central bank funding. The  assets.