Hence, I very much concur with the conference’s theme of “A Call for Action.” It takes courage to lead a transformative 2  journey into an unknown territory. The collective wisdom shared among directors here will enable all of us to make better informed decisions and lead our organizations, and more importantly, lead Thailand, onto the right path – the path which will rise above disruptions, as the IOD has eloquently put it. As Thailand embarks on the journey for digital transformation, we must focus on three key imperatives of productivity, immunity, and inclusivity. Technological advancement provides tremendous opportunity for us to uplift these three areas like never before. While policymakers and regulators can provide support at the infrastructure level and promote a stable environment conducive for innovation, it is at the firm level that actions can be and must be taken to drive meaningful changes for the country as a whole. First, on productivity: uplifting the country’s productivity is necessary to ensure continued long-term economic growth. Specifically, structural changes due to an aging workforce have hastened the need for our country to improve productivity just to maintain output level. In fact, Thailand’s labor productivity growth has been on a decline. From 2002 to 2017, our annual growth of labor productivity averaged 2.9 percent, a significant drop from an average of 5 percent during 1986 to 2001. In contrast, countries such as China and Indonesia have been experiencing rises in productivity growth.

They provide preliminary information on expected producer price performance, an important link for the price-setting process in the economy. Consumption and savings tendencies of the population are revealed through relevant indicators. In conclusion, the economic sentiment indicator combines the businesses’ and consumers’ opinions, giving hints of the economic prospects in the short run. I would like to speak at length about the importance and informational utility of the confidence and the foregoing indicators. But, I would rather emphasize the respect the users should pay to such indicators, opting for being oriented to the large information flow through them. I regard this only as the beginning of a comprehensible and transparent cooperation. To this end, other special meetings and activities will follow, enriching various groups of interest with knowledge on business confidence or tendency indicators. I have confidence in the added values they will bring to users’ analyses. But, I advise and require of users, researchers, economic journalists of written and electronic media, students and pupils, businesses and consumers and the broad public, to rightly understand these indicators, before using them. These tendencies have resulted from businesses’ and consumers’ opinions and do not constitute the official stance of the Bank of Albania. The Bank of Albania has built them on the basis of an advanced methodology. It has made use of the information obtained from interviewed businesses and consumers and it has confidence in their qualitative assessments and in those indicators. Their publication enhances the public transparency and makes the decision-making process more comprehensible.