The direct role pertains to the further development of the banking market and products – in line with the best international experiences. Likewise, insistent work on further reducing the level of non-performing loans should not be neglected, and should be considered by all of us as a key factor for further strengthening financial stability in Albania and providing an impetus to the economy. On the other hand, the indirect role consists in the cooperation that you may offer to many structural reforms across all the sectors of the economy and in all the dimensions of the business setting. Your expertise is not insignificant. It must assume an authoritative place in the economic debate. Third, while acclaiming the cooperation between the Bank of Albania and the Albanian Association of Banks and commercial banks in educational activities, I would also like to iterate the importance of financial education and financial inclusion. As financial services and products develop and become more complicated, financial education helps users to understand and use them; it also helps preventing financial crisis and contributes to the financial stability and economic growth of a country. We need to continue to be key promoters in designing and implementing financial education programmes. Financial education is an investment in the future and it should be an integral part of our agendas, engaging more intensively in the implementation of alternative and innovative methods for enhancing financial education among the public.

First, countries could come to a common understanding about the core elements and principles governing their financial markets development and regulations. Full harmonisation is neither desirable nor feasible. But policy‐induced divergences may prove very destabilising and lead to a reduction in welfare. It should be possible to agree on the core principles governing, for instance, capital account regimes, the treatment and resolution of internationally‐active financial institutions, deposit insurance, and the organization and functioning of securities markets. Divergences in financial development are a fact of life. Some of them reflect true social choices and preferences that must be respected and accommodated. Others result from deliberate or inadvertent policy‐induced distortions, which should have been reduced or eliminated. Disentangling these two sources of divergences in financial development should be a priority in the international agenda. Second, the search for an efficient and powerful “financial safety net” should be pursued. Stabilising the demand for international reserves would bring huge benefits in terms of world welfare. At present, reserve accumulation can only occur through a conjunction of balance of payment surplus and some degree of exchange rate intervention. In addition, if sterilisation proves difficult or impossible, it also leads to unwanted changes in monetary policy. Precautionary reserve accumulation, however legitimate, unavoidably creates side effects for domestic macro policies as well as spillover effects on other countries. All countries, therefore have a common interest in finding ways to disconnect reserve accumulation from exchange rate management and, more generally, from balance of payment situations and monetary policies. The difficulties, however, are huge.