In addition, it is also worth noting that in terms of management information system (MIS), more investments were made to either upgrade or enhance their existing MIS to facilitate effective monitoring of suspicious transactions. This is encouraging. Now let me share the not so good news. Implementation of AML/CFT policies and procedures, although has shown improvement as compared to the last review, is still an area that needs to be strengthened particularly with regards to CDD and customer monitoring. While we acknowledged that in almost all cases, CDD were conducted, the extent of due diligence in some instances were inadequate and not reflective of the level of money laundering and terrorist financing risks posed by the customers and/or transactions. We believe that to address this issue, strong risk culture must be inculcated and the performance and reward system should reflect that culture. Self-regulation Institutions with strong wisdom in risk governance and culture do not solely depend on the regulator and supervisor to tell them what to do. Self-regulation is important, particularly for financial institutions. In performing the intermediary functions, depositors and shareholders depend on the decision and practice of the financial institutions to balance the risks and rewards in their operations with the changes in operating environment and risk management expectations. We have learned and relearned abundant lessons from the experience of the past crisis and many of those lessons lead to changes in regulation, supervision, enforcement and risk management practices throughout the world.

Our financial education programmes, informative publications on banking products and services, coupled with regulation, licencing, introduction and support for new payment and financial services technology and instruments, are aimed at enhancing financial inclusion and generating opportunities for financial access for all groups of the society. The Bank of Albania deems that more may be done with regard to designing and promoting financial products that satisfy better the needs of such groups. In addition, we think that there is more space for faster growth of credit to the private sector, particularly for certain sectors, in which inequality is more notable. More concretely, agriculture is a good example to illustrate this point. While it contributes a significant share to the gross national product, it only gets a small share of credit and other financial products. Beyond these policies and strategies for developing financial products, the real fight against poverty and inequality in the long term should be based on accomplishing structural economic, legal and institutional reforms, designed in the framework of the European integration process. The priorities of our economies should focus on maintaining macroeconomic and financial stability, continuing structural reforms in infrastructure and the labour market. Creating favourable conditions for doing business and for honest investors, by fighting informality, should be accompanied with the creation of human capital and preparation of the workforce in accordance with the actual technological developments and challenges. Dear participants, The Transition Report 2016–2017 of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is an important document for all of us.