samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Durmuş Yilmaz: Enhancing “ShamGen” banking – Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan Speech by Mr Durmuş Yilmaz, Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, at the conference on enhancing “ShamGen” banking – Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, hosted by the Central Bank of Turkey and co-organized by the Al Bank Wal Mustathmer Group, Istanbul, 28 March 2011. *  *  *  Distinguished Guests, Welcome to the international “Enhancing “ShamGen” Banking: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan” conference hosted by the Central Bank of Turkey and co-organized by the Al Bank Wal Mustathmer Group. We are delighted to host Governors and Deputy Governors of Central Banks, Chairmen of Banks Associations, CEOs of banks from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan as well as international economists and finance specialists. During the two-day conference, issues towards improving banking and financial cooperation among Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey will be discussed in the context of Turkey’s recently developing relations with her neighbors and other countries in the region. The conference will address issues such as enhancing banking cooperation between these countries, Banks Associations’ possible contributions to the process, payment systems, Islamic banking implementations and prospective cooperation fields, funding of small and medium-scale enterprises in the region and the future political and economic outlook of ShamGen countries. As we all know, the share of developing countries in the global economy has been growing and, in line with the increased importance of these economies, we witness significant changes in decision-making mechanisms worldwide.

The fact that a wide range of important decisions on issues ranging from food and energy safety to repair and reconstruction of the financial system are made at the G-20, of which Turkey is an active member, clearly suggests that the global economy’s center of gravity is shifting. Corresponding to the ever-increasing importance of the G-20, the weight of Turkey and her peer developing countries in international institutions, such as the IMF, is increasing as well. In his statement in the late 2010, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss Kahn described the changes in the Fund’s quotas and governance “the most fundamental governance overhaul in the Fund’s 65-year history, and the biggest ever shift of influence in favor of emerging markets and developing countries”. Once the IMF’s 14th General Review of Quotas is completed, Turkey’s share in the IMF’s total quota will be more than doubled compared to 2004. Their outstanding economic performance and rapidly increasing share in the global economy over the past decade have considerably helped developing countries to have an increasing voice in the international arena. These countries, among which Turkey, with its economic performance, stands as one of the leading countries, have weathered the recent global crisis with less damage compared to developed countries and exhibited better performance in reverting back to pre-crisis production levels and growth rates. Recently, there have been debates about whether the developing country group has decoupled from developed countries.
Perhaps the most common problem mentioned is that investors will then seek assets with a higher yield, which also have a higher risk. One of many reasons for such behaviour could be that some portfolio managers are required to attain a minimum return on their portfolios. This behaviour risks causing an unwarranted rise in asset prices when interest rates are low.6  5  There is a lively debate on this question. One important contribution to the discussion is the Riksbank’s commission of inquiry into risks on the Swedish housing market (Riksbank 2011). The National Institute of Economic Research (2013) and Svensson (2013a) are examples of newer contributions to the debate, claiming that housing prices and household indebtedness do not comprise an evident problem. 6  See Rajan (2005). BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Another possible problem with low interest rates is that the monetary policy stimulus can help weak companies to get along without having to deal with their problems. In this way, a necessary structural transformation in the economy may be postponed. There is also a risk that the stimulus will help the banks to struggle along with weak balance sheets, which will inhibit credit granting in the economy.7 The problems I have just mentioned nevertheless appear less relevant to current developments in Sweden. But I would like to mention two other potential problems linked to low interest rates, which I think justify the concern over the Swedish economy.

Anita Angelovska Bezhoska: Speech - European Statistics Day Speech by Ms Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, at the marking of the European Statistics Day, held at the National Bank, Skopje, 28 October 2019. * * *  Your Excellency Zhbogar, Dear Director General Simovski, Dear Mr. Nymand-Andersen, Esteemed managers of regulatory institutions, Former Minister of Finance, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my great pleasure to address you today at the celebration of the European Statistics Day. Reflecting on the concept of today’s event for further affirmation of the importance of statistics, as well as our commitment to compile quality statistics under the latest European and international standards in general, I recall what Herbert George Wells said a century ago, “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” And he was right. Today, when information and knowledge are the main building blocks of society, and when neither full information nor thorough knowledge is possible without quality data, there is no doubt that statistics are and will always be necessary, both for the individual and for the society at large. Therefore, the responsibility we all have as part of the statistical puzzle is great – we create a public good whose benefits are felt by every individual, every institution, policy maker ... all this for the benefit of a healthy and prosperous society. The past decade has witnessed tectonic changes in the global economic and financial landscape.
For this reason, the Bank of Albania, as we have pointed out at the beginning of this cooperation, has engaged in a series of projects aimed at analysing the domestic market with a view to identifying and addressing the needs for intervention. These projects are assisted by the World Bank and funded by the SECO. I take this opportunity to once again thank these institutions for their contribution and support. Moreover, the Bank of Albania and the National Payment Systems Committee has already adopted and is implementing the national strategy for the retail payments market. This strategy aims to create a contemporary and comprehensive market of retail payments, supported by secure and efficient infrastructures, as well as by a wide range of payment instruments and services that meet the needs of financially capable individuals to make payments across the country. Incorporating financial inclusion into the Bank of Albania’s objectives, this strategy has set ambitious quantitative targets aimed at doubling the number of bank account holders (from 38% in 2014 to 70% in 2022) and increasing the number of electronic payments per capita (from 4.3 to 2016, to 10 in 2022). However, in order to achieve these objectives, a concrete and detailed action plan is needed.

The Bank of Albania will continue to supply the banking system with adequate liquidity for the smooth functioning of financial markets. *** At the end of discussions, the Supervisory Council decided to keep the key interest rate unchanged, at 3.5%. The Supervisory Council deems that the current monetary conditions are adequate to meet our medium-term inflation target, and provide the monetary stimulus necessary to recover the domestic private demand. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
The notion that central banks have an unlimited capacity to create money is an illusion and thus cannot be used as an excuse not to reform the economy. Overall, the policy measures taken on several fronts were able to stem the risk of a credit flow fallout with related adverse implications for price stability. In particular, the role of bank credit in financing the private sector has been preserved, supported by an increased recourse to debt markets especially by large firms (see slide 6). The sovereign debt crisis and fragmentation of credit markets across national borders My discussion so far has focused on term and liquidity premia, which have taken centre stage since the very beginning of the financial crisis. Starting in May 2010, the crisis was marked by a new phenomenon, until then little known in euro area: the emergence of large and variable credit risk premia in the pricing of supposedly risk-free securities issued by euro area governments. This has led to questions about the creditworthiness of some sovereign issuers and to a fully-fledged sovereign debt crisis. This new phase of the crisis has taken on several dimensions. The first and most noticeable one has been the large sell-off of government debt issued by sovereigns in precarious fiscal positions (see slide 7). Markets have increased their scrutiny of the fiscal and structural conditions of Member States (the “fundamentals”) and assessed them with an increasing degree of risk aversion.

In a financial crisis of these proportions, “outside money” – an asset that is not a liability for anybody else than a central bank – becomes the sole trustworthy store of value. 4 Only a central bank, the monopoly provider of outside money, can respond to the scrambles for liquidity. The ECB injected its funding capacity into a market vacuum left wide open by bank retrenchment, dealer defaults and investor panic. In these conditions, inter-temporal financial arbitrage – of the type I described above – becomes impaired. The power of banks and dealers to engage in or finance inter-temporal trades of liquidity balances is degraded. So the main conduit of monetary policy – which depends on those trades – is lost. The ECB had to open a new channel, the “liquidity channel”, to get round the roadblocks facing the interest rate channel (see slide 4). More precisely, the ECB acted in two dimensions. It sought to alleviate the difficulties experienced by banks in getting liquidity from the interbank market, which was putting pressure on the assets side of banks’ balance sheets and increasing the risks of hindering credit supply. At the same time, it sought to restore the normal pass-through from short-term money market (lending) rates to other market and bank interest rates.
Norges Bank is not in a position to fine-tune movements in the krone exchange rate. When a central bank trades in its own currency to influence the range of the exchange rate, market participants can exploit a situation whereby the exchange rate does not reflect underlying market conditions. With free capital flows, this can trigger huge movements of capital. The interest rate, which is the Bank’s primary instrument of monetary policy, has a more indirect, less predictable effect on the krone exchange rate, while the exchange rate may be affected by a number of conditions beyond the control of the Norwegian authorities. The Norwegian political authorities formulated Norges Bank’s mandate for the conduct of monetary policy. The regulation reads as follows:  BIS Review 67/2000  2  “The monetary policy to be conducted by Norges Bank shall be aimed at maintaining a stable exchange rate against European currencies, based on the range of the exchange rate maintained since the krone was floated on 10 December 1992. In the event of significant changes in the exchange rate, policy instruments will be oriented with a view to returning the exchange rate over time to its initial range. No fluctuation margins are established, nor is there an appurtenant obligation on Norges Bank to intervene in the foreign exchange market”. This mandate allows Norges Bank latitude for exercising discretion in its conduct of monetary policy.

Norwegian banks have been an important importer of foreign capital. Net capital inflows to banks amounted to about NOK 140 billion in this period, with short-term capital accounting for almost half. Chart 12 Banks’ gross foreign debt Percent of lending  13  BIS Review 67/2000  Since 1995 there has been a shift towards higher foreign funding in the banking sector. Banks have financed the widening difference between customer deposits and lending from foreign sources. Chart 12 shows that a large portion of foreign borrowing has been short-term. In 1998, lending growth slowed and customer deposits increased, and growth in banks’ foreign debt came to a halt. In recent years we have thus recorded exports of long-term capital that are considerably higher than the current account surplus. The substantial net outflow of long-term capital from the private sector may partly reflect a thin Norwegian capital market. The Norwegian bond market is not very developed and the value of equities in the Norwegian market in relation to GDP is very low. Chart 13 Net fixed investment rate and productivity growth in manufacturing Percent  It is also worth noting that according to highly uncertain national accounts figures, fixed investment is now at a very low level and there is little growth in productivity in Norwegian manufacturing. There are few signs at the moment that the “new economy” has reached this segment of the Norwegian business sector.
(4)  Given the restrictions in the convertibility of RMB, Participating AIs are required to limit their RMB net open positions (whether net long or net short) to 10% of their RMB assets or liabilities. Participating AIs’ credit risk exposure to the Clearing Bank In their letter to the HKMA in November, the Hong Kong Association of Banks raised the issue of credit limit against the background of an increasing amount of RMB deposits being placed by Participating AIs with the Clearing Bank as the RMB business in Hong Kong continued to expand and deepen. The HKMA and the PBoC have held discussions about this issue, and it is considered that the issue could in principle be resolved by the Participating  2  BIS Review 175/2010  AIs establishing custodian accounts with the Clearing Bank. This means that the RMB funds will be placed with the PBoC Shenzhen Branch through the Clearing Bank as a custodian to overcome the issue of credit limit. We will further discuss with the PBoC, the Clearing Bank and Participating AIs on the details of such an arrangement including the related legal documents and operational procedures. It is hoped that the arrangement can be implemented soon early next year. Conclusion I believe that next year will be a crucial year for the development of offshore RMB business in Hong Kong. We have made very good progress this year.

Conversion arrangement for trade settlement in 2011 Following the substantial expansion of the geographical coverage of the cross-border RMB trade settlement scheme in June this year, the amount of cross-border RMB trade settlement has grown rapidly, from a monthly average of about RMB 4 billion in the first half of the year to about RMB 30 billion each month in August and September, and close to RMB 68 billion in October. Under such circumstances, the amount of RMB purchased by the Participating Authorized Institutions (Participating AIs) through the Clearing Bank in the China Foreign Exchange Trading System in Shanghai increased notably in October, and the conversion arrangement concerned was suspended in late October. In response, the HKMA promptly introduced a number of measures, and the RMB market in Hong Kong has been operating orderly and smoothly to date. As regards the conversion arrangement for 2011, after discussions with the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the HKMA consider appropriate to introduce certain refinements to the arrangement for the conversion of RMB conducted by Participating AIs for their customers in relation to cross-border trade settlement.
To support this growth, we have been building an e-trading ecosystem in Singapore to support electronic trade execution and price discovery in FX  https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2021/riding-the-growth-momentum-in-asia  3/11  12/02/2021  "Riding the Growth Momentum in Asia" – Keynote Speech by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director (Markets & Development), …  during Asian trading hours, a move that will bring about better execution, lower cost of trading, and greater transparency for market participants. Key global and regional sell-side and buy-side players, as well as e-trading platforms, have anchored their regional pricing and matching engines here, and have seen early successes. Global liquidity providers that have completed the set-up of their pricing and trading engines in Singapore provided feedback that trade-fill ratios have improved, from about 80% to near 100%. Notably, when FX market volatility reached multiyear highs in March last year amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the robust e-trading infrastructure in Singapore was able to tide regional market participants over the storm, with relatively good execution. We seek to enhance Singapore’s value proposition as a full-service international fund management and domiciliation hub. The Variable Capital Companies (VCC) framework provides fund managers with a wider suite of investment fund vehicles and potential cost savings from centralising fund management and domiciliation activities, whilst providing new business opportunities for fund managers, service providers and fund advisors. The VCC has seen strong industry adoption, with close to 200 VCCs set up in its first year, for a diverse range of traditional and alternative investment strategies.

This cooperation within Secure Pay has already delivered important results: two sets of recommendations have been issued so far, concerning the security of internet payments in 2013, with an expected compliance of the market by February 2015, and the security of mobile payments in 2014, with recommendations currently being finalized. The final text of the recommendations concerning the security of payment account access service has also been published for information in May 2014 and shared with the EBA, in light of the ongoing revision of the Payment Services Directive. The fact that the European legislator has taken into account large parts of the Secure Pay forum’s recommendations in the review of the Payment Services Directive is for me the proof of the quality of the works led by the forum. I particularly welcome the integration of strong customer authentication in the revised text of the directive, which clearly constitutes a major progress in the security of retail payments. Secure Pay has recently undergone a significant governance change, and will in the future be co-chaired by the European Banking Authority and the European Central Bank. This should further increase cooperation between the oversight and supervision institutions and ease the implementation of recommendations. To conclude – and I will finish there –, I would like to underline how topical this conference is.
From 2003 and up to the end of 2007, growth in the Norwegian economy was high and gathered momentum both more quickly and more markedly than in the business cycles in the1980s and 1990s. The interest rate has by and large curbed the effects. The interest rate was low in the years between 2003 and 2005 while activity in the economy was still moderate, and has gradually been raised since then. Because inflation was low, the interest rate was kept low in a period of high growth and increasing capacity utilisation. Three factors were important: First, labour has flowed into Norway from other countries. The opening of the labour market to the new EU countries has provided us with access to a reserve of labour. Inward labour migration rose towards the end of the cyclical upturn and has contributed to sustaining the high level of growth. In 2007, the population expanded by more than 56 000, with net immigration at 40 000. This is the highest population growth ever recorded in Norway. Second, businesses in Norway have become increasingly efficient, resulting in lower costs. It has been profitable to hire more employees despite the high wage level in Norway. The business sector has made use of new technology and businesses have been restructured. The many sweeping reforms of the 1980s and 1990s – the fundamental shift in the Norwegian economy 1 – resulted in more efficient markets. Over the past few years, we have reaped the benefits of the measures implemented then.

Norges Bank has reviewed the Norwegian guarantee scheme and in a submission to the Ministry of Finance recommends the following revisions 15 : •  Member banks must always pay a fee  •  The membership fee is differentiated more clearly according to the banks’ risk exposure  •  … and thus becomes counter-cyclical by using growth in banks’ activities as a supplementary measure of risk exposure  •  A reduction in the guaranteed amount per customer  •  An increase in the notice of withdrawal for voluntary members of the Norwegian Banks' Guarantee Fund from one to two years  •  Branches of foreign banks pay to the extent possible a membership fee according to the same rules that apply to Norwegian banks  We have constructed a simple example of how such a fee system could be designed. Our example shows what banks’ total fee payments would have been since 1993 compared with actual payments. The fee rates depend on both the banks’ lending growth and bank’s core capital ratio. The chart also shows actual payments of membership fees. In our example, the fee payments would have been considerably lower early in the 1990s and large in recent years when lending growth has been high. This provides a better profile with small payments in periods of low growth in bank activities and high payments when growth is strong.