samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The volume and value of cheques returned unpaid on account of insufficiently funded accounts continued to decrease following the issuance of the directives on dishonoured cheques and direct debit instructions which were issued by the Bank of Zambia in the second quarter of 2010. The volume of unpaid cheques decreased by 15% to 4,202 (Quarter 2: 4,929). Similarly the value of unpaid cheques decreased by 6.6% to K35.3 billion from K37.8 billion reported in the second quarter of 2010. The public is advised to ensure that they have sufficient funds in their accounts whenever they issue cheques in order to avoid charges. Economic reform programme An IMF Mission was in Zambia from 2nd to 15th September 2010, to conduct the 5th Review under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) arrangement. Overall, the mission was satisfied with the programme performance. A follow-up mission visited the country from 28th October to 3rd November 2010 to conclude the discussions. The mission had fruitful discussions with the Zambian authorities and reached agreement on a set of macroeconomic policies and structural measures for the remainder of 2010 and for 2011. The policies and structural measures would pave the way for the completion of the Fifth Review of the ECF arrangement, subject to approval by the IMF’s Executive Board. The Board meeting is expected to be held around mid-December 2010. BIS Review 148/2010  11  The IMF mission commended the Zambian Government for its handling of economic policy so far in 2010.

This outturn reflected continued improvement in hydro-geological conditions and uninterrupted mining operations in the country at both open pit and deep underground mines. On a year to date basis, copper output at 625,844.1 mt was 20.9% higher than the quantity produced in the corresponding period of 2009. Cobalt output also increased by 16.1% to 2,349.41 mt during the third quarter of 2010 from 2,023.84 mt recorded in the previous quarter. This level of output reflected a 16.6% rise compared to 2,015 mt produced in the third quarter of 2009. The improvement in output mainly reflects continued benefits arising from the resumption of production at Konkola Copper Mines and Chambishi Metals Plc coupled with improved hydro-geological conditions. Further, cobalt output on a year-to-date basis at 6,362.2 mt was 59.7% higher than the 3,982.9 mt of cobalt produced in the corresponding period of 2009. Manufacturing Cement output 7 by the monitored company increased by 26.1% to 234,240.7 mt in the third quarter of 2010 from 185,702.0 mt during the previous quarter. Nonetheless, on a year-todate basis, output of cement at 577,130 mt was 4.0% lower than the 601,432.5 mt produced in the same period of 2009. 7  Does not include production by Zambezi Portland Cement as data was not available at finalisation of the report.
Looking both ways Speech given by Sam Woods, Deputy Governor, Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Regulation  Remarks prepared for the May 2017 Building Society Association (BSA) Annual Conference Published 10 July 2017  I planned to deliver an abridged version of this speech at the BSA conference on 3 May but had to withdraw my participation due to election purdah. I am grateful to Kayleigh Guinan, Eric Engstrom, Nick Lock, Louise Oscarius and Alex Holmes for their assistance in preparing this text. I am also grateful to David Kynaston and John Fforde, on whose work I have drawn heavily. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  The theme of the BSA’s conference is the future – the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for building societies and what it means to be a modern mutual. Now, being forward-looking is great and we have indeed built that into the most basic foundations of the PRA’s approach. But only looking forward would be unwise, given history’s ability to repeat itself. We need to look both ways. In that context, I want to talk about supervision and why it matters - supervision, as distinct from regulation. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they are quite different. Regulation concerns the framework of rules and legal standards which govern the way in which firms operate. Systems of regulation, even if self-regulating, have been around for a good number of years in a wide variety of sectors, from media to energy to education.

In contrast the asset management regulators had no real concept of consolidated or group supervision and looked primarily at each legal entity in a group by itself. A small building society would be visited by staff from the Building Societies Commissioner every six months, while the insurance regulators’ norm for a company with far greater assets than 42  that small building society would be one visit every three years . Through a series of public papers, the FSA therefore embarked on defining a common approach towards all of the institutions it supervised. It defined its interactions with firms into 5 broad activities: authorisation; baseline monitoring; thematic work; specific risk mitigation; and work once a risk has escalated or crystallised. 40  Building Societies Commission (BSC);Friendly Societies Commission (FSC); Insurance Directorate (ID) of HM Treasury; Investment Management Regulatory Organisation (IMRO); Personal Investment Authority (PIA); Registry of Friendly Societies (RFS); Securities and Futures Authority (SFA); Securities and Investments Board (SIB); Supervision and Surveillance Division (S&S) of the Bank of England 41 FSA website: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/about/what/approach 42 Foot, Michael. ‘The FSA: The first six years’, Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance, Vol. 12 Issue. 3, (2004), pp. 201-205 14  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  14  The extent of the FSA’s interaction with firms was defined by its assessment of two factors: a firm’s probability of failure and its likely impact upon failure.
A current issue that has disproportionately drawn attention to banks is the affordable housing issue. Bank Negara Malaysia recently featured a box article on this subject in 2016 Annual Report. The public debate largely continues to misdiagnose or ignore the root cause of the problem, that is, affordability and accessibility, rooted by low incomes and compounded by the huge mismatch between demand and supply of affordable houses. The popular myth, is that it is all about access to financing. I am perplexed. Actual data is selfevident. It shows the continued strength in bank financing to households for the purchase of affordable homes, with four in five new housing loans extended for houses priced below RM500,000. Yet banks have done little to educate and inform the public on this financing trend. The industry ought to be at the forefront in explaining the real situation and where possible, offering suggestions to help address this issue. Affordable housing is not a problem that is unique to Malaysia. Policymakers around the world, 2/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  including in developed countries, continue to look for creative solutions to this delicate socioeconomic challenge. A common thread across these solutions is their multi-faceted dimensions. The solution for Malaysia has to involve rebalancing the supply of housing towards the affordable segments. We require a bold and pragmatic solution. We estimate a shortage of 960,000 units of affordable housing. This is projected to reach 1 million units by 2020.

Bank Negara Malaysia 25 May 2017  1 Regional average prime office vacancy rate is based on 2015 data 2 Attributed to William McChesney Martin Jr., the ninth Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Bank 3 Return on investment: measured as FDI profit over FDI stock  6/6  BIS central bankers' speeches
Going forward, I hope that we will see more industry-driven standards and protocols that will assure customers that they can only expect consistent, top-notch quality service from their agents – putting to rest any public doubts that may have been caused by the few “bad apples” in the sector. Conclusion The three areas that I have just described will require, at its core, a strong willingness to learn and adapt. The uncertainties of the future may appear to loom large over the horizon. But if we take the time to consider the lessons of our past and circumstances of our present – which I am sure will be robustly discussed today – we are likely to be surprised by how much we already know of what we need and ought to do. In this regard, NAMLIFA is well-positioned to play a proactive role in facilitating ongoing, constructive dialogues on important industry issues that will certainly demand a concerted response by all parties. New skills and capabilities must be developed, processes need to be redesigned, and assumptions need to be revisited. Would the industry be better served were it to move away from the existing “tied agent” model? How should entry requirements and training offerings for agents evolve going forward? Should all agents be full-time agents? To what extent can, and should, insurance agents be allowed to sell takaful products, and vice versa? These are just some of the questions that could potentially revolutionise the way agents do business.

Marzunisham Omar: Takaful agents - striving for excellence in a disruptive world Speech by Mr Marzunisham Omar, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the 1st National Takaful Annual Convention 2018 "Takaful Agents: Striving for Excellence in a Disruptive World", Kuala Lumpur, 14 April 2018. * * * Saya ingin mengucapkan terima kasih kepada pihak penganjur atas jemputan untuk menyampaikan ucaptama di Konvensyen Takaful Tahunan Kebangsaan yang pertama ini. Tahniah diucapkan kepada NAMLIFA atas inisiatif untuk menganjurkan program khusus bagi para ejen takaful buat julung kalinya. Forum seumpama ini penting bagi menyediakan platform untuk pertukaran idea, pengalaman dan pandangan antara pakar-pakar industri dan agen takaful. The future seems to be a favourite theme at various forums nowadays. Today’s is no exception, and rightly so. In a time of rapid, successive change, it is crucial that we seek to understand the underlying currents shaping our future. Just as important is where we see ourselves in that same future. There is a quote from Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, that offers a practical advice on this matter: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Therefore, while we contemplate the forces of change and challenges of today, this must be coupled by action and determination to change for tomorrow. We need to be prepared for the future. Otherwise, we may become irrelevant. While agents are a formidable force in the insurance and takaful industry today, there is no certainty that this will be the case going forward.
13/15  Testifying to this is the letter sent last week by the US authorities to Facebook. In its first paragraph, a request – or rather a demand – is made for the implementation of the project to be delayed while its potential consequences are evaluated. The same paragraph indicates that the libra project “is intended to rival US monetary policy and the dollar”. I do not think this is an exaggerated reaction, since the irruption of big tech has potentially systemic implications. Customer relations I think it is also important to talk about customer relations as another key factor of any future business model. I shall not dwell on this point, the ground for which has been previously covered. But I would like to point out that this change is the only means of responding to the challenge the sector faces to restore its image and reputation. Society has changed in terms of its demands of the financial sector. The rules governing customer-bank relations have likewise changed. A good example of this is the recent law on real estate lending. Banks should, therefore, change to respond to the new social and regulatory reality. Evidently, legal cases from the past continue to weigh on and hamper the restoration of image. But if banks change their behaviour today they will be laying the foundations on which to build the industry’s future reputation. In this respect, last year we saw a decline in claims lodged against banks.

As can be seen, profitability, measured both in terms of RoA and of RoE, is above the European average. If we analyse average efficiency, we see that Spanish banks clearly have lower management expenses in relation to their revenue than their European competitors, particularly those in the core euro area countries. Regrettably, these strengths do not change our position relative to the comparative average levels of solvency. Admittedly, supervisors are always applying pressure in relation to capital levels; that is our mission. Banks usually protest about this growing capital requirement which, as the most widespread complaints have it, appears to be never-ending and may lead to credit being  5/15  squeezed. Reference is also made, with some justification, to the low density of many European banks’ risk-weighted assets, owing to a more extensive use of internal models. I have indicated on more than one occasion that our banks have comparative strengths. For instance, we are in a better position in terms of leverage when set against the industry average in Europe; moreover, the low use of internal models by Spanish banks enables the volatility of capital requirements to be reduced, while in turn keeping our banks unaffected by the introduction of the Basel III “Output floor”. Nonetheless, I do not share the rest of the analysis of the sector. I would point out that a high level of capital is neither a weakness nor a disadvantage.
But the Germans and the European citizens do not need to be afraid: We have delivered and we will deliver price stability. Inflation in Europe rose to 2.2% in December, the highest rate for two years. We are always concerned if inflation rises and are following developments very closely. But the figures for December can be accounted for, above all, by rising energy prices. Let me say something about the longer-term figures. In the last 12 years the average rate of inflation in the euro area has been 1.97 %, and in Germany only 1.5 %. Those are better figures than at any time in the 50 years before the euro was introduced. In Germany, inflation was 2.2 % in the 1990s, 2.8% in the 1980s and even higher in the 1970s. These figures speak for themselves. But why does nearly everybody have the impression that the euro has made life more expensive? That may have been the case ten years ago. I do not believe that this perception is shared today by a significant number of fellow citizens. The ECB has ensured that the euro is a credible and stable store of value. Why then do you think that one in two Germans wants the Deutsche Mark back? Once again: The euro has ensured stable prices. In the last 12 years the price level has been more stable in the Federal Republic than over the previous 50 years. The Germans, too, are aware of how valuable it is.

Let me begin with the global economy. At present, it is still very much the case of a firm recovery in the global economy continuing into the first half of this year. Growth of the G3 economies for first half of the year is estimated at 4.9 percent for the US, 5.2 percent for Japan, and 1.9 percent for the EU, all accelerating from the rates of growth observed in the second half of last year. For the whole of this year, even allowing for the recent higher oil prices, market still anticipates a continued recovery in the global economy driven by the economic expansion in the US, Japan, and Asia. The latest consensus forecast now puts global economic growth this year at about 4 percent, significantly higher than the average of the past three years. To put these numbers into perspective, it is worthwhile to note that sentiment on the global economy at this time is less robust than the perception we had six months ago. This change has been driven in part by the recognition that the reversal of several important factors that had been supporting global growth since the second half of last year is now beginning to impact the global economy. The key factors I am referring to here include the higher oil prices, the rising global interest rates, and the slowing of the Chinese economy.
The transfers to the central government budget are expected to finance 15 percent of central government expenditure in 2018.2 The GPFG has become important to the Norwegian economy. Norges Bank has been tasked with managing the fund since its establishment in 1996. Already then, objections were raised, both inside and outside the Bank, to the Bank’s role as manager of the fund. Could a bureaucratic institution like Norges Bank be suited to reaching the objective of earning the highest possible return? Would the Bank succeed in recruiting employees with the necessary expertise? What about safeguarding the central bank’s reputation? Would this weaken executive management’s focus on the Bank’s core tasks? It is interesting to note that more than 20 years later, the Central Bank Law Commission 3 addresses some of the same issues. Despite the scepticism, the management of the fund was assigned to the Bank. In the history of Norges Bank, the authors write: “Even though the challenges posed by investment management at Norges Bank were obvious, neither the civil servants at the Ministry of Finance nor the executive management of Norges Bank appeared to be in any doubt that the fund should be placed in the central bank.”4 The historians cite the need to keep investment management under control and fears of lower returns if investment management were divided among several institutions among the reasons behind the choice of Norges Bank as manager. We should also remember that it was uncertain how large the fund could grow and how long it would last.

3 Official Norwegian Reports NOU 2017:13 New central bank act. Organisation of Norges Bank and the  Government Pension Fund Global (Summary in English). 4 Lie, E., J. T. Kobberrød, E. Thomassen and G. F. Rongved (2016): Norges Bank 1816–2016. Fagbokforlaget (in  Norwegian only). 5 Between 31 December 2007 and 31 December 2009, the average stake in listed companies worldwide  doubled. 7/7  BIS central bankers' speeches
You have probably seen pictures of bank runs – when queues form outside banks in crisis as people want to withdraw their money in the form of (safe) cash. This is why central bank money is still the linchpin of the system, even if it is rarely used in normal circumstances. The fact that it is available as an alternative acts as a kind of guarantee for the private bank money. 4 It is also the case that some key systems for payments are increasingly concentrated to a few agents. See, for instance, the card payment market where two American companies are entirely dominant in Sweden. Unlike our neighbouring countries, we do not have any domestic card payment network. This means that we are dependent on foreign infrastructures to make the majority of households’ payments. Without cash, therefore, an important part of the Swedish infrastructure would be completely in private ownership and dependent on foreign infrastructures and foreign companies. So if the use of cash continues to decline, it is not enough to say that this works fine at present, because the future will look rather different, regardless of whether we produce an e-krona. Other functions that cash has performed include functioning as a back-up when there have been disruptions to other forms of payment. It has also helped ensure  3  See, for instance, Fung et.al. (2018) and Söderberg (2018). 4 See, for instance, Tobin (1985).

At present, it can take anything from three hours to three days to transfer money between two banks in Sweden. How long the payment takes depends on the time and day that it is initiated. A payment made on a Tuesday afternoon, for instance, will reach its destination around three hours later, while a payment made on a Friday afternoon will not go through until Monday morning. With interbank payments to a country outside of the EU it gets even more complicated. This type of payment currently takes 2-7 days to go through. They can be made more quickly, but this can be expensive. There is thus a major difference between what a consumer expects, given the technology available, and how the systems actually work and I believe that the two must converge soon. Within Sweden there are already instant payments available for individuals through the Swish mobile app. But this system cannot cover all Swedish payments. As the demand for instant payments will increase in the future, the systems must be adapted to manage them better. The Riksbank currently runs the central payment system for large-value payments between the Swedish banks and other major agents. The system has been constructed to manage large-value payments in a secure manner. Individuals’ payments are lumped together into larger amounts before they pass through the system. The Riksbank also has regular contact with all of the participants.
There are actually structural reasons why Thailand is a safe place to do business and a place where risks of economic shock, economic downturn, or significant economic crisis are  Page 5 of 11  very low relative to almost any other countries in the region. If you look at the causes where a country typically experiences an economic crisis, what are those? A country sometimes might have the foreign exchange or balance of payments crisis as they run out of reserves and have too much external debt. Yet, Thailand, unlike other countries in the region, our vulnerability on this front is extremely low. We have a very low level of external debt relative to our foreign reserves which exceeds 200 billion dollars while our short-term external debt is significantly below that. Our current account has been traditionally in very large surpluses. Therefore, the risk of having a baht crisis, like what we had in 1997, remains extremely low. What are other kinds of crises? Another kind of crisis that people experience is the fiscal crisis. If you look at the Thai governments’ balance sheet, it is relatively strong, the public debtto-GDP ratio is just over 50 percent and the fact that the government is able to borrow 10-year money at only 1.7 percent indicates that people are still willing and happy to finance the government. They do not see the government as having a very high risk.

I am sure that this is no surprise to you when you have to deal with the agencies; you go here for one thing, then go to another place, face another regulation, and the two are not consistent. There is a very clear priority for the government to resolve this issue by, despite being almost a cliché, providing the one-stop facilitation service. So that businesses and investors, both foreign and Thai, do not have to go through all numerous government agencies each with their own cumbersome and often conflicting laws and regulations. Currently, the government’s efforts in regulatory guillotine are underway, however, the speed obviously needs to be accelerated, otherwise, it is really hard to improve the business climate in our real ease of doing business. The final reason why Thailand remains a great place to do business is that there are some new trends that will help mitigate some of the long-term structural weaknesses in the Thai economy which are holding us back. What are some of these? First, automation and our demographics; automation is coming very strongly in Thailand, maybe to some lesser degree in other countries in the region. However, looking forward, the costs of automation would come down and the benefits are clear. With the COVID19 that has brought lockdowns, everybody sees the need for automation to avoid the work interruptions and relying less on human workers. This will help mitigate one of the long-term structural weaknesses in Thailand of poor demographics.