samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
With increased funding, particularly through foreign direct investment, institutions which are involved in medium- to long-term financing, are expected to access relatively cheaper credit and increased access to finance. With an increase in access particularly to rural areas, the number of excluded people is likely to decline from the levels of 66% recorded in 2005. 6.0  Conclusion  Recent developments in the financial sector offer some encouragement that working together, the Government, the BoZ, and the financial service providers can extend the range and reach of financial services that are available to both corporate and individual clients. Still a lot remains to be done to extend financial services to the majority of our people and foster ongoing sustainability of our financial institutions. In this regard, there are a number of challenges that lie ahead including the following: i. Developments in the external sector are a constant threat to macroeconomic stability in general and implementation of effective monetary policy, in particular. In this regard, maintaining single digit inflation, given the rising fuel and food prices will be quite challenging and therefore requires concerted efforts of all key stakeholders. ii. Strengthening and staying the course with regard to the recently achieved fiscal prudence as well as forging relatively stronger coordination between fiscal and monetary policies is an equally challenging task in the period ahead. iii.

The lack of efficient financial service provision means that poor people are either forced to use inefficient provisions, often at high cost (for instance, with high transactions costs, excessively high interest rates on loans, or poor returns on savings) thereby entrenching poverty – or they do not have access to certain financial products, either because of an absolute absence of suitable products or because available products are too expensive;  ii. This in turn tends to restrict the economic opportunities open to the poor and makes the poor vulnerable to adverse events and financial loss (e.g. due to the lack of insurance and secure savings products);  2  Access Financial Services Limited and Access Leasing Limited were placed under statutory management of the Bank of Zambia on 13 January 2003. 2  BIS Review 99/2008  iii. The absence of savings products makes it difficult to build up capital; and  iv. As the poor are faced with the high costs of accessing financial services, and are denied entrepreneurship opportunities that might provide them with a chance to earn an income, poverty becomes entrenched. In the recent past, it is gratifying to note that financial sector in Zambia has begum to demonstrate that it is reasonably efficient, sound and profitable. Since the many bank closures of the mid- to late-1990s following stiff competition and the tightening of regulation and oversight through the promulgation of the Banking and Financial Services Act (BFSA) in 1994 we have not experienced any serious banking crisis.
Countries like Sweden have made use of the international capital market over the years, for instance, to finance large investments in the infrastructure. Historically, foreign loans and investment have played an important role in the growth and development of poor countries. The financial markets thus perform an important function in society. However, over the years we have seen that major problems sometimes arise in the financial markets. One example is the Asian crisis 1997-98. It is usually bank problems, resulting from bad loans, which lie behind such crises. When confidence in the banking system fails, both domestic and foreign savers flee the country, and a currency crisis may arise. The social costs of such a crisis are very serious. In the wake of the crises, there is often a focus on the globalisation process in general, and the international capital markets in particular. Demands have been made for measures to prevent the emergence of new crises. This has included renewed discussion of the proposal for a tax on currency transactions, what is known as the Tobin tax. However, I do not consider the Tobin tax to be the right method to use, as it does not solve the fundamental problem, namely incorrect assessments of credit and risks and the lack of capital in the banks to cover losses. Furthermore, I can see a number of risks if this proposal were adopted, although I will return to that later.

This was because Government Securities offered highly attractive yield rates (with zero credit risk) compared to other asset classes. Recently Government has maintained prudent fiscal  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  policies and has reduced its borrowing to 1.8% of GDP leading to a significant fall in Government Securities yield rates. The reduction in yields rates on government securities has made it increasingly difficult for banks to sustain their profitability. Therefore, in order to remain profitable, banks have had to become innovative and resorted to riskier banking activities. This resulted in a shift in the asset structures of most banks from government securities holdings to an expanding loan portfolio, which offers higher returns. 3.0  The role of financial innovation in promoting the private sector  Innovation can generally be defined as a continuous process where enterprises and individuals seek new and improved products, processes, and organisation structures in order to reduce costs of production, better satisfy customer demands, and yield greater profits for themselves. When specifically referred to banks and other financial institutions, innovation, commonly is known as financial innovation, refers to any change in the scale, scope and delivery of financial services. Financial innovations can therefore be grouped as new products (e.g. adjustable rate mortgages; personal loans); new services (e.g., internet banking); and new production processes (e.g., electronic record-keeping for securities; credit scoring); or new organisational forms (e.g., Internet-only banks).
These design features – ex-ante mandates and ex-post accountabilities – are explicitly designed to ensure the actions of the Bank’s policy committees are well-aligned with society’s wishes. They are designed to reduce the risk of the Bank becoming a monomaniacal inflation-fighter or risk-slayer, with preferences out of kilter with society’s. To operate effectively, these institutional checks and balances need to be reasonably wellspecified – for example, the mandate needs to be clear and monitorable. On the monetary policy side, this is relatively straightforward. The MPC’s inflation target is quantitative and observable. It also appears to be pretty well-aligned with societal preferences. The Bank conducts regular surveys of public attitudes towards the inflation target. They paint a consistent picture. Around half of respondents think the 2% target for inflation is about right (Chart 2). The minority who disagree are roughly evenly-split between those thinking it is too low and too high. There is also a striking correlation between public attitudes towards the Bank and perceptions of inflation, with the public seemingly strongly averse to above-target inflation rates (Chart 3). There is little sense that the Bank may be acting like an “inflation-nutter”. This pattern is replicated internationally where inflation targets are centred around 2% and survey evidence indicates a strong public aversion to inflation. 46 Even if public minds are made up on appropriate inflation targets, academics are not. Since the crisis, a number of countries have operated near the zero bound for interest rates.

The fan chart is constructed so that outturns of inflation are also expected to lie within each pair of the lighter red areas on 30 occasions. In any particular quarter of the forecast period, inflation is therefore expected to lie somewhere within the fan on 90 out of 100 occasions. And on the remaining 10 out of 100 occasions inflation can fall anywhere outside the red area of the fan chart. Over the forecast period, this has been depicted by the light grey background. See the box on pages 48–49 of the May 2002 Inflation Report for a fuller description of the fan chart and what it represents. BIS central bankers’ speeches  21  Chart 11: The uncertainty parameter in the one year ahead inflation and GDP fan charts Inflation  Standard deviation  GDP  2.0 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2  1998Q1  2001Q1  2004Q1  2007Q1  2010Q1  0.0  2013Q1  Source: Bank calculations. Notes: The chart shows the standard deviation implicit in the one year ahead probability distribution published in the MPC Inflation Reports since 1998. See the box on pages 48–49 of the May 2002 Inflation Report for a fuller description of the fan chart.
With regard to financial indicators, both bond and foreign exchange markets were lately under the influence of global factors. After having risen somewhat in February 1999, in tandem with US bond yields, during March euro area government bond yields remained broadly unchanged. At the same time the US dollar strengthened further in recent weeks in the light of international developments. When looking in some more detail at the evolution of the world economy, positive signs relate to the continuously strong growth of the US economy, the gradual recovery in some Asian countries and indications of a stabilisation in Latin America. However, there is no noticeable evidence as yet of a turnaround in Japan. In the euro area, overall growth prospects worsened towards the end of last year, as reported when we met in early March. In the meantime, official data confirm that real GDP growth in the euro area weakened in the fourth quarter of 1998, when compared with the previous quarter. The weakness is particularly apparent in the manufacturing sector, where confidence deteriorated further. Partial information covering a substantial part of the euro area appears to confirm this picture. Most recent data on total employment in the euro area point to a certain deceleration in net job creation in the last quarter of 1998. As regards the latest available data on the HICP, the annual increase in consumer prices has remained unchanged at 0.8% over several months up to February 1999.

And those same AI systems and processes are being used today across the financial sector to bring benefits to consumers, to firms, and to the UK financial system as a whole. AI-driven online platforms may, for example, help customers manage their money and savings more effectively, as well as make the processing of loan applications or insurance claims easier, quicker, and more transparent. Financial firms may, in turn, benefit from AI in making efficiency and productivity gains, in tailoring products to customers’ needs, and in more effective ways of combating financial crime. AI may also boost the overall efficient functioning and resilience of financial markets and the wider economy. Clearly, the world is a very different place today from the one we started this year with; and while the COVID crisis has had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the economy, and on the households and businesses that drive it, it has also increased and focussed interest in the potential uses of AI in tackling some of the many immediate problems and challenges precipitated by the crisis. For example, many businesses, including financial firms, are looking to use AI, sometimes combined with alternative data sources, for enhancing customer engagement, for driving more automation of internal processes, and for improving virtual working environments.
SPEECH DATE:  13/05/2019  SPEAKER:  Deputy Governor Henry Ohlsson  VENUE:  Swedish Society of Financial Analysts  SVERIGES RIKSBANK SE-103 37 Stockholm (Brunkebergstorg 11) Tel +46 8 787 00 00 Fax +46 8 21 05 31 registratorn@riksbank.se www.riksbank.se  Underlying inflation – for better or for worse∗ Thank you very much for the invitation to come and speak at the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts! Concepts such as underlying inflation and core inflation are often used in discussions on inflation and monetary policy. But what do these concepts actually mean? And what do measures of underlying inflation actually measure? My aim today is to discuss why central banks are interested in underlying inflation and how it can be measured. I will first explain why we need to measure underlying inflation (or core inflation, which I regard as a synonym) and then briefly describe the history of the concept. There are two common methods of calculating underlying inflation, and on the basis of these I will discuss which properties are desirable for measures of underlying inflation. I will also present different examples of measures. There are measures that are better or worse with regard to how well they fulfil the criteria for desirable properties. But a first conclusion is that there is no measure that is unequivocally better than all the others. Although there are a couple of measures that are clearly better than others.

For a long time the inflation target was expressed in terms of the Consumer Price Index (the CPI), but since 2017, it has been expressed in terms of the CPI with a fixed interest rate (the CPIF). In the CPIF the direct effects of changes in mortgage rate have been excluded. 1 2 The following description of the concept of inflation can be found on the Riksbank’s website: If prices of some individual goods or services rise, this is not inflation. Prices of individual goods and services can rise because, for instance, it is more difficult to get hold of them. For instance, the price of oil may rise as oil reserves diminish. Such price increases are usually called relative price increases and are thus not inflation. For inflation to exist there should be an increase in the general price level, that is, prices in general should rise. And if one is to call it inflation, the price increase should be lasting. If, for instance, the government raises VAT, this has a one-off effect on the general price level, but does not lead to prices continuing to rise. The CPI is calculated every month by Statistics Sweden (SCB) and is intended to measure the changes in an average Swedish household’s living expenses. The measure is an aggregate of prices of a number of different goods and services. The aggregate is based on how large the proportion of each product or service is in relation to an average household’s total consumption costs.
Jean-Pierre Roth: Switzerland - small, but global Speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Swiss-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, Buenos Aires, 16 November 2004. *  *  *  Argentina is a country that fascinates us Swiss. At one time it offered my fellow countrymen a new home when they could no longer see a future in Switzerland. Today, Argentina largely attracts business people and tourists. As you know, Switzerland is a tiny country in comparison with Argentina. Situated in the heart of Europe, it has more or less come to resemble one huge agglomeration. It is therefore not surprising that many Swiss view Argentina as a land of space and opportunity. But as to what Switzerland could mean to the Argentineans is only something I can guess at. Perhaps you still associate my country with chocolate and watches. On the other hand, maybe you recently visited Switzerland and discovered that a great deal has changed. The country has become more liberal-minded and has begun to question its traditional views - partly of its own accord and partly as a result of external pressures. I am delighted to be here this evening and to have this opportunity to give you a brief overview of the challenges facing Switzerland in an era of growing globalisation, under the heading “Switzerland: small, but global”. 1.

This requires greater positive impact by Islamic finance beyond its shareholders and immediate stakeholders – to also benefit the society; environment; and the broader economy as a whole. Thank you. 1 IFSB Islamic Financial Services Industry Stability Report 2017 – 18 countries out of 35 countries tracked by IFSB. 2 BNM Islamic Finance Handbook December 2016. 3 International Finance Corporation. 4 The World Bank – Feature Story 2016. 5 The World Bank – Feature Story 2016. 6 BNM Islamic Finance Handbook December 2016. 7 Thomson Reuters Business News 25 July 2017. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches
The five-year T-bond rate moved down from about 8 per cent to just over 3.8 per cent, or by 4.2 percentage points. Falling interest rates can stimulate economic activity and thereby lead in time to higher inflation as the level of resource  1  BIS Review 61/1999  utilisation rises. In the short run, however, the effect on inflation, measured with the CPI, is downwards as a result of lower house mortgage interest payments. So although inflation may ultimately rise as a consequence of lower interest rates, the initial effect is the opposite. In these years, moreover, the effect on interest expenditure was substantial in that inflation expectations dropped from high levels as the low inflation regime gradually gained credibility. The downward effect of the lower interest rates on the CPI actually averaged as much as 0.7 percentage points a year. Altered indirect taxes and subsidies In this period there were also fairly large changes in indirect taxes. In the longer run this can influence inflationary pressure via fiscal policy’s impact on demand but there are also more direct effects. In 1996 changes in indirect taxes had a downward effect on CPI inflation of 0.6 percentage points, followed in 1997 by an average upward effect of 0.5 percentage points. In 1998 as a whole the impact of altered indirect taxes was marginal; after the summer, however, various measures, including the reduction of tobacco tax, lowered the rate of CPI inflation by 0.5 percentage points.

We make all our regulations and decisions accordingly. Distinguished Representatives of the Business World, Supply constraints that were triggered by the pandemic and gradually intensified due to geopolitical risks, and heightened volatilities in global financial conditions caused negative supply shocks, pushing global inflation to historic highs. The main determinants of the inflation we face are strong and persistent supply shocks, exchange rate developments and the resulting deterioration in pricing behavior. With the decisions we take, we aim to ensure a permanent decline in inflation as soon as possible. Accordingly, together with the interest rate policy, we have been effectively making use of the policy mix composed of liquidity, collateral, reserve requirements and management of international reserves. In the context of our integrated policy framework, we will continue to use our instruments with a liraization perspective. Additionally, while making our monetary policy decisions, we pay regard to the creation of financial conditions that will help increase investments and production, and support the sustainable current account balance objective. Our investment and export-targeted loan programs that will lead the sector, as well as our macroprudential policies, are also supportive of this process. While concluding my remarks, I would like to extend my thanks to you, as the representatives of the Turkish industry. The contributions of our industrialists will be of significant importance in achieving the current account surplus on the back of investment, employment, production, export gains that will lead our economy to sustainable price stability and development goals.
Lee Hsien Loong: Separation of financial and non-financial activities in Singapore  Speech by DPM Lee Hsien Loong, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Monetary Authority of Singapore and Deputy Prime Minister, at the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) dinner, held in Singapore on 21 June 2000. *  *  *  Introduction I last attended the ABS annual dinner two years ago. I spoke then on the need to free up our banking sector, and to allow competition a greater role in shaping the industry. Last year, MAS announced measures to improve corporate governance and institutionalise the management of the local banks, and the first phase of a five-year programme to liberalise the banking sector. We sought to strengthen Singapore’s banking system, provide Singaporeans with quality banking services, and further enhance Singapore’s position as an international financial centre. These reforms have brought about visible changes. The next step in strengthening the local banks is now to separate financial and non-financial businesses within the banking groups, and to further improve corporate governance through a clearer and more transparent ownership and control structure. Separation of financial and non-financial activities What ought to constitute the permissible activities for a banking group is an issue which all financial regulators have to consider carefully. If we took a purely laissez faire approach, we could leave banks to structure themselves as their owners and management saw fit.

Indeed, the inflation rate fell to around 2% (2.2% in July and August), taking the differential with the euro area to half a percentage point, although some rise can be expected in the rest of the year and in the first quarter of next year. The smoothly slowing path of household consumption in 2006 and the first half of this year reflects, as mentioned above, the foreseeable adaptation to more normal monetary and financial conditions. The rise in interest rates that began at the end of 2005 has been spreading gradually to the various financial and banking markets, stimulating household saving and increasing the interest burden on indebted households. Also, the lower rates of household wealth appreciation (mainly due to the gradual containment of house price rises) have reduced the expansionary influence of wealth effects on consumption. Counterbalancing this, the strength of employment, which continues to grow at more than 3%, and the high levels of confidence have played a significant role in ensuring that this process of adjustment of household consumption to more sustainable levels has been smooth. Also perceptible since the beginning of 2006 has been the lesser vigour of residential investment which, as in the case of private consumption, was also in response to the interest rate rise and to the lowered expectations of house appreciation following the sharp price increases of previous years.