With the huge financing gap for infrastructure development standing at $ trillion in the decade to 2020, AIIB will be looking to play a major role in bridging the shortfall. Under the strong leadership of President Jin, AIIB would provide a global platform to coordinate efforts among existing international financial institutions and government authorities to bring development issues to light; it also has the capability to mobilise the liquidity and field expertise from investors, financiers and project developers from the private sectors to facilitate infrastructure development and their related financing activities. To the HKMA, President Jin has been a long-time friend. Just four months ago, we had the honour of President Jin as the officiating guest at the launch of IFFO and a key panel speaker at our inaugural conference. President Jin acknowledged that IFFO can be an important contributor to Asian infrastructure by helping to guide liquidity from private and institutional investors into productive investments, while also serving as a platform for communication, cooperation and knowledge exchange. Today we have the presence of 300 leaders from various sectors including finance, architecture, building and construction engineering, project management and consulting, project development and operation as well as professional services, many of you being the senior management of your leading organisations in the field. Indeed, Hong Kong possesses a critical mass of financial professionals which can support the operations of AIIB in areas such as project financing, bond issuance, investment, financial management and foreign exchange management.

Natasha Ahmetaj: Launching of the new Albanian banknote serie Address by Ms Natasha Ahmetaj, Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the launching of the new Albanian banknote serie, Pristina, 12 September 2019. * * * Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Today, we have invited you all to the premises of the Bank of Albania – also known as the “homeplace of money”, both figuratively and in the physical sense (as we are standing above the old treasury room) - to celebrate the two dimensions of the currency: a means of exchange and an authentic work of art. At the very beginning, our process of banknote production started with a design contest. This process is still in place today. Designs had to meet three criteria: be a genuine and unpublished work; have a national character; employ a set of techniques that serves security needs, namely, the use of fine and complicated lines which are extremely difficult to replicate. These three criteria are applicable to our banknotes. From the very beginning, banknotes have been designed not only as a means of exchange, but also as a part of national identity. That is why, in examining banknotes, numismatists are able to discern different eras, the extent of a nation’s freedom, or even aspects of social interdependence. Often, especially in dictatorial systems, banknote design manifests a government’s influence on markets. A lack of these influences is a dimension of social freedom. Time has proven that nothing has changed the educational and national mission of the banknote.