samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Clearly, there is room to further unlock the potential of SMEs in Malaysia. While the banking system remains the main provider of funds to support the activities of the SMEs, there is the tendency for this system to focus on the more established SMEs. It can also be argued that the banking institutions also lack the appropriate skills and experience to develop and nurture the SMEs. This is where the presence of DFIs is so critical, that is to provide the complementary services, both financial and non-financial, particularly to support viable but smaller SMEs which are unable to obtain financing from the banking institutions. In Malaysia, there are at present two major DFIs specialising in supporting the development of the SMEs. These are Bank Pembangunan dan Infrastruktur Malaysia Berhad and the Credit Guarantee Corporation (CGC). Each of these DFIs has been assigned the specified mandated roles in assisting the SMEs in Malaysia. Bank Pembangunan is entrusted with the mandate of promoting entrepreneurial development by not only providing financial services to the SMEs, but also assume the nurturing and developmental role through the provision of advisory and consultancy services to this targeted group. Meanwhile, the CGC is mandated to assist the SMEs that lack track record and collateral to have access to financing, by providing credit guarantees to enhance the SMEs' accessibility to credit facilities.

Recognizing this, the Bank of Thailand has gradually relaxed capital flows regulations, initially on outward direct investment and more recently on portfolio investments for Accredited Investors. We plan to continue to broaden the scopes of investment with freer mobility for Thai residents in investing overseas. The BOT is also working closely with the Ministry of Finance and other agencies on appropriate tax incentives to facilitate the setting up of treasury center to enable large corporate to conduct in house financial transactions more efficiently and with lower transaction costs. With the opening up of the New Investment Frontier, this is probably the most exciting times for Thai corporates to invest abroad to secure resources both raw material and know how, expanding customer base, acquiring distribution channels, and broadening markets. 3. The last area of “Move in”, aims to create a more attractive business environment for foreigners to turn to Thailand as an important spring board for investment in the new frontier markets. Thailand has a geographical location advantage to become an investment hub for the ASEAN Economic Community, particularly the new frontier markets. To become a magnet for the region, Thailand needs to maintain its ranking in the ease of doing businesses in such areas of rules of law, governance and strong regulatory frameworks. The Thai capital market has also worked hard to promote its role as the funding centre for new frontier markets. Recently the Government of the Lao PDR successfully issued Thai baht-denominated bonds amounting to THB 1,500 million to finance its investment projects.
Anita Angelovska Bezhoska: Opening and closing address presentation of the EBRD Transition Report 2021-22 Opening and closing address by Ms Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, at the presentation of the EBRD Transition Report 2021-22, Skopje, 24 March 2022. ***  Opening address Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, At the beginning let me thank you for the kind invitation to address you at the launch of the latest Transition Report that analyses and measures the progress of transition economies on their way towards higher income levels. It is indeed my privilege. For us, in the transition world, the Report has always been an important guideline, both with respect to advices on how to address the deep-seated structural issues, but on cutting edge maters as well. In the current context, it even gets more prominence by providing valuable insights in the extent to which the unprecedented shock have derailed policymakers from structural agenda, which is a key precondition for faster transition. Similar to most of the countries in the world, the emergence of the pandemic has hit Macedonian economy severely. Although it caught us on a strong footing with solid economic fundamentals and absence of any significant disequilibria, the economic activity plunged by 6%-which has not been observed in the last two decades. Despite the rebound during last year, not all economic losses were recovered.

Closing address At the end, let me thank the colleagues from the EBRD for the highly insightful presentations on the state of the economy and the main challenges of the WB region as well as the main findings of the Transition Report, which primarily focuses on digitalization. This does not come as a surprise knowing that digitalization has been significantly boosted during the pandemics, bringing a number of benefits to the societies, including support for faster transition and income convergence. Despite the efforts, income gap of the Western Balkan economies in comparison with the EU still remains wide - regional income is only about 38% of the European income. This largely correlates with the level of productivity in the region that significantly lags behind the EU productivity. And, the increase in productivity can be achieved only by structural and institutional reforms, including digitalization that can lead to more efficient allocation of resources. Thank you. 3/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
I think we can go as far as to say that the entire global economy is dependent on the debt crisis in Europe being managed in a sensible way over the next few years. The problems in Europe must be solved so that the financial markets work effectively and the real economy grows if global growth is to pick up again. My assessment is that we have a few years of weak growth in the euro area ahead of us. Several countries are facing gigantic problems, partly in the form of large public debts and partly in the form of seriously weakened competitiveness. It will be hard to find the right balance of measures to deal with these problems as budget consolidation, which is necessary to restore confidence in sustainable public finances, must not be allowed to restrict growth too much in the short term. Structural reforms are also required to improve competitiveness. However, several important steps have been taken in the EMU over the last 12 months to deal with the weaknesses that led to the debt crisis becoming so extensive: imbalances between the economic development of different countries, a lack of discipline in fiscal policy and inadequate financial supervision.3 One example of this is the fiscal compact, which was signed in March this year. The ECB has also taken short-term crisis management measures that have helped to improve confidence on the markets since the end of last year. Here I am thinking mainly of the three-year loans.

Since the monetary policy meeting of 18 April, some new statistics have become available for Sweden, including figures for unemployment, the retail trade and foreign trade in March and the tendency survey of the National Institute of Economic Research for April. By and large, these statistics do not indicate any significant changes in the course of development than that we saw ahead of us in the Monetary Policy Update in April. However, I think we should be cautious about reading too much into figures for individual months. I will therefore wait to make an overall assessment of the new statistics until our next monetary policy meeting in July. A factor that I think should be highlighted – although it did not directly determine my stance at the latest monetary policy meetings – is the link between monetary policy and financial stability. Let me explain this in more detail. The link between monetary policy and financial stability In my opinion there are links between monetary policy and financial stability. We should be careful to monitor the incentives that low policy rates can create over time (see slide 5). Both housing prices and household debts have increased dramatically in Sweden for some time  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  now. This has been noted, for example, by the European Commission in an Alert Mechanism Report.4 These tendencies have slowed down over the last 12 months.
This brings me to the fundamental question of why a particular pattern of asset price moves tends to precede recessions. Let's suppose for now we have estimated and evaluated the best possible model to incorporate the statistical implications of these asset price patterns on recession probabilities and of the depth of a recession based on the available data. Is the model showing a causal relationship or is it just a predictive relationship with a different causal factor driving both asset prices and the real economy? And if the latter, what are the causal factors? This is a different question than the one we were debating in our internal discussions in 19992000 and 2006-2007. We spent much of that time arguing about whether structural change, particularly lower compensation for interest rate risk, meant that asset price indicators were less relevant than before. An alternative approach would be to ask, if the probability of recession is elevated, what might be causing this phenomenon? And then ask the complementary question: If the probability of recession is unusually low, what might be causing that phenomenon? In this latter case, given the asymmetry in loss between elevated recession probabilities and elevated 4/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  expansion probabilities, a very helpful follow-up question would have been whether beliefs in central banks contributing to the economic stability of the Great Moderation had made us too complacent about recession risks. Tetlock emphasizes the importance of post-mortems once outcomes are known.

That reflects the mark-down in global growth, heightened geo-political and financial risks and the weak pipeline of inflationary pressures from wages internally and commodity prices externally. Taken together, this implies interest rates could remain lower for longer, certainly than I had expected three months ago, without endangering the inflation target. Thank you. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  16  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  17  18  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  19  20  BIS central bankers’ speeches  References Acemoglu, D and Autor, D H (2010), “Skills, tasks and technology: Implications for employment and earnings”, NBER Working Paper No. 16082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. Autor, D H, Katz, L F and Kearney, M S (2006), “The polarization of the US labor market”, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 96, No. 2, pp. 189–94. Autor, D, Levy, F and Murnane, RJ (2003), “The skill content of recent technological change: An empirical exploration”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 118, No. 4, pp. 1279–1333. Bank of England (2014), “August 2014 Inflation Report”, available http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/inflationreport/2014/ir1403.aspx.
This question is very pertinent today as it is clear that market liquidity in the system is more fragile, not just in particular market sectors, but also across the system as a whole. Dealers are holding less inventory. For example, in US fixed income corporate securities, market maker inventories are half the size they were immediately before the crisis and back at levels seen in the early 2000s even though corporate bond markets have doubled in size since then. How much should we worry about that? If liquidity is always a good thing, how far can we and should we seek to restore liquidity to levels seen before the crisis? This is a question that is increasingly asked of prudential regulators. I think the issue is more complex, however. Nothing in life is free and that is most certainly true in financial markets. Liquidity comes at a price. And that price is not at all the same for all financial assets. It should reflect the underlying liquidity characteristics of the asset itself and how it is traded. Financial assets cannot escape entirely their underlying risk characteristics. Financial intermediation and financial engineering can reduce the costs of those risks by enabling them to be held by those who can best bear them – and I will return to that. But when pricing the liquidity risk of an asset its underlying characteristics matter. And, the more its liquidity depends on intermediaries being able and willing put their capital at risk, the higher the price should be.

Of course, since new forms of shadow banking activities are certain to develop in the future, FSB members will continue to monitor for emerging risks, and share data and analysis in order to support any future regulatory response. 9 The data refer to the UK, the US and the Euro Area, as of June 2009 (see Bank of England Financial Stability Report, June 2009). 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  5  These include reforms to secure the tools and powers authorities need to deal decisively with failing banks. At the same time, major banks are required to make themselves easier to resolve, including by writing ‘living wills’. Most importantly, global standards now require that banks hold sufficient debt in life such that, in the event one fails, its successor can be recapitalised to support the continued operation of its most important activities. The combination of these initiatives and the determination of authorities to complete the job explains why the too-big-to-fail public subsidy for private systemic banks has fallen by 90% in the UK. Put simply, a decade on, market discipline is coming back. The system is also fairer because we are addressing the root causes of misconduct. In the wake of the crisis, a series of scandals ranging from mis-selling to manipulation undermined trust in banking, the financial system and to a degree markets themselves. The economic consequences have been enormous.
This means we can keep inflation in check regardless the size of our balance sheet. If the recovery got underway in earnest and credit demand surged, we could slow down the rate of credit creation by raising the interest rate we pay on excess reserves. Banks wouldn’t lend out funds at lower rates than what they can earn from holding reserves with us. As a result, a hike in the IOER would raise the level of interest rates throughout the economy and this would dampen any expansion of credit. Our ability to pay interest on excess reserves is an essential tool that we can use to avoid future inflation problems.4  4  In technical terms, we will be operating a floor-based system for implementing monetary policy rather than the traditional corridor-based system for a period. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  We are mindful of the fact that there could still be confusion about how exit will take place. This could increase financial market volatility. To reduce this risk, the FOMC has published a set of exit principles. These principles lay out a roadmap about how exit is likely to occur: First, the end of reinvestment of maturing securities; second, an increase in short-term interest rates, and, third, the gradual sale of mortgage backed securities to shrink the magnitude of excess reserves in the system and ultimately to restore the Fed’s balance sheet to a predominately all-Treasury portfolio.

My conclusion is that the easing of financial conditions resulting from non-traditional policy actions has had a material effect on both nominal and real growth and has demonstrably reduced the risk of particularly adverse outcomes. Nevertheless, I also conclude that, with the benefit of hindsight, monetary policy needed to be still more aggressive. Consequently, it was appropriate to recalibrate our policy stance, which is what happened at the last FOMC meeting. As I argued in a recent speech, simple policy rules, including the most popular versions of the Taylor Rule, understate the degree of monetary support that may be required to achieve a given set of economic objectives in a post-financial crisis world. That is because such rules typically do not adjust for factors such as a time-varying neutral real interest rate, elevated risk spreads, or impaired transmission channels that can undercut the power of monetary policy.2 One reason that monetary policy may have been less powerful than normal is that one of the primary channels through which monetary policy influences the real economy – housing finance – has been partially impaired. This has both quantity and price dimensions. Credit availability to households with lower-rated credit scores remains limited and households with homes that have fallen sharply in value have lost most or all of their home equity and this makes it very difficult for them to refinance these mortgages. 2  Dudley, William C. (2012). “Conducting Monetary Policy: Rules, Learning and Risk Management”.
This has led to growing concern about conduct risk in the social, political and supervisory domains, and naturally in the industry itself. This concern is also shared internationally, as reflected in the recent work of the Financial Stability Board to strengthen the governance and remuneration frameworks in order to mitigate the risk of misconduct. The Banco de España strengthened its supervisory activity in relation to conduct four years ago. This greater supervisory presence, along with regulatory requirements, the need to adapt to new and more demanding customers and judicial rulings in defence of consumers, is prompting banks to react, and they are making efforts to implement the measures needed to correct these practices. However, much remains to be done. Banks must be more proactive in developing a strong culture that is not only oriented towards complying with customer transparency regulations, but also fundamentally towards identifying and satisfying customer interests. This requires the involvement and commitment of governing bodies and the spread of these values throughout the institution; especially to the sales network, which must have an incentive mechanism that does not give rise to perverse or counter-productive incentives. In short, banks must incorporate the customer protection perspective into their risk appetite framework, making it a cornerstone of their governance and decision-making processes. For this process to be successful, the control of regulatory compliance in the marketing and management of banking products and services needs to be strengthened.

This implied that Swedes used more cash. In recent years the use of cards has accelerated. With regard to both the number of terminals and use of cards per capita, the Nordic countries are now very close to one another. The differences in card use between Sweden and the other Nordic countries – particularly with regard to Denmark and Finland – declined rapidly after 2001. Nevertheless, cash is still used to a greater extent in Sweden than in other Nordic countries. If one suspects that cash may be a relatively expensive payment service, the more widespread use of cash in Sweden in relation to the rest of the Nordic countries could mean that the Swedish payment system is less efficient in this aspect. But why do we use more cash in Sweden? We do not have a good answer to this. However, experiences from both Sweden and Norway show that demand for payment services is pricesensitive. 1 In Norway, electronic payments, including card payments, increased very rapidly after the banks changed their pricing towards charges based to a greater extent on actual costs. For instance, they began by making a small charge for ATM withdrawals. 2 It is possible that our pricing of card and cash payments respectively – the price the consumers see – lies behind the fact that we use more cash? When it comes to card and cash payments, it turns out that it is only the retail trade which the banks subject to charges.
If one is to ensure that the financial system has adequate resilience to shocks, one must have requirements for sufficient capital and sufficient buffers rather than using the policy rate. Confusing the policy areas risks leading to a poorer outcome for both, and making it more difficult to hold the Riksbank accountable. Conflict between price stability and financial stability in the wake of the financial crisis The global financial crisis was the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s Depression. Central banks around the world therefore implemented powerful measures in the form of large interest rate cuts and large-scale asset purchases to safeguard the inflation target and mitigate the economic consequences of the financial crisis. At the beginning of the crisis, expansionary monetary policy did not entail any conflict between price stability and financial stability. Inflation was under control, demand was weak and the financial system was severely weakened. Monetary policy could contribute to both increasing demand and strengthening the financial system. Monetary policy remained expansionary even after the acute phase of the crisis was over. Central banks in many countries held their key interest rates at low levels for a long time and also made large-scale asset purchases.

In the early 2000s, for example, Claudio Borio and Philip Lowe had pointed out in a BIS article that low and stable inflation could not only promote financial stability, but that financial imbalances could also be built up in such an environment.16 While the development of supply will slow down price developments, it can also lead to overly optimistic risk assessments, strong credit expansion and rising asset prices.17 Although it may be difficult to use monetary policy to limit the build-up of financial imbalances, they nevertheless considered it possible and desirable to take financial stability into account in certain situations. They also advocated more cooperation between central banks and supervisors for this purpose. In the wake of the financial crisis, there was an intense debate on the possibilities for monetary policy to counteract financial imbalances and to what extent this would be desirable. Some economists, such as Frank Smets, argued that monetary policy should take into account the build-up of financial imbalances.18 Smets noted that the costs of financial crises are very high and that macroprudential policy has the most effective tools for maintaining financial stability. However, macroprudential tools are relatively untested and their effectiveness is not fully evaluated, while there is much evidence that the monetary stance affects credit build-up, liquidity and risk-taking more generally. Monetary policy tools such as large-scale asset purchases can also be difficult to distinguish from macroprudential tools in their sub-objectives and in their effects on the economy.