samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But in the past year there occurred subsequent developments leading to a substantial demand for banking services that included payment of salaries, payment of public utilities bills and fees through banks, more subscription to public offering of companies' shares, increase of demand on share trading, as well as enforcement of some security controls required as measures for protecting the banking system against money laundering operations. All this occurred in a very short period, leading to rising complaints of inefficient services provided by some bank branches. Banks managed and they are still working to overcome such shortcomings by employing and training more staff, opening new branches, and providing alternative channels to perform banking services, with employment rising during twelve months by 20%. 2. Banks have made significant strides in provision of asset management services such as investment portfolio accounts, mutual investment funds aimed at domestic, regional and  2  BIS Review 59/2006  international shares and bonds markets, money market instruments and real estate investment. Assets under management increased 8 times from Rls 17 billion to Rls 132 billion during the period 1996-2005. 3. Since 1998, consumer loans have increased dramatically. This can be largely attributed to the SARIE system which permits loans to be secured by salary assignments. These loans have provided access to banking system liquidity to a large segment of customers to meet their consumer and investment needs, thereby, supporting the pace of economic activity. 4.

Hamad Al-Sayari: World class banking sector Speech by His Excellency Hamad Al-Sayari, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, during “The Future Building" Seminar, in cooperation with Euromoney, Riyadh, 9-10 May 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to participate in this Symposium and share with my insights on “The Development of Banking Sector” in Saudi Arabia and have a glance over its development and role in supporting the growth of the Saudi economy to be more dynamic and attractive to domestic and foreign investments. At first, let me briefly cover the achievements of the Saudi banking sector since the establishment of SAMA in 1952. According to SAMA’s Charter, two of its most important objectives are to issue and strengthen the Saudi currency and stabilize its internal and external value, and to regulate commercial banks. On the basis of a historic review, we may judge how far these objectives have been achieved. The exchange rate has fluctuated in a very narrow band over the past six decades. This has contributed to attaining the ultimate goal of our monetary policy of achieving price stability. The inflation rate has remained very low and has generally remained, on average, below 1% per annum over the past 20 years. These stable conditions have contributed strongly to sustained growth in the overall economy with average real GDP growth of 3.2% per annum for the last decade.
Similarly, long-term rates on bank mortgage loans to households have increased in Greece, Ireland and Spain since the eruption of the sovereign debt crisis in May 2010, while they continued to fall in France and Germany until the end of 2010. Considering the scale of the underlying problems and thus the time it will take to resolve them, the potential for cross-country variation in monetary policy transmission will persist. So the single monetary policy may have different effects in different parts of the euro area, leading to persistent differences in economic performance, even with the single policy stance established by the ECB’s Governing Council. We are already seeing greater variation from country to country than in the pre-crisis period. While the German economy appears to have recovered quickly from the recession – growing 1.5% in the first quarter of this year – in those countries most affected by the sovereign debt crisis growth remains sluggish. As a result, current cross-country growth differentials are significant compared with the pre-crisis period. To some extent, these differences are a mirror image of those before the crisis. Those countries which had more buoyant growth during the pre-crisis period are also those that have accumulated large financial imbalances. In the middle of the past decade, the strong growth in household loans fuelled housing and construction booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland. Loan growth rates there peaked at annual rates of around 25%, compared with an area-wide peak of 10%.

I am certain that over time these places will be your most profitable centers as places like Lusaka will only yield narrow margins due to stiff competition. Chairperson, Zambia’s economy has shown some resilience in the midst of the global economic crisis. As you are aware, the economy has posted some marked improvements in macroeconomic indicators in 2009 with GDP growth estimated at 6.3%. Both inflation and the yield rates on Government securities have edged downwards while the exchange rate of the Kwacha against major international currencies has also shown some stability in the recent months. It is for this reason that I reiterate my appeal to all financial service providers including Access Bank Zambia Limited, to make some meaningful efforts in addressing the high cost of banking services in the country. It is also my expectation that the banking sector will take advantage of opportunities arising from the conducive macroeconomic environment in the country to create wealth and contribute to the development in our economy. Finally, let me extend my gratitude to the Board of Directors and the Managing Director of Access Bank Zambia Limited for inviting me to officiate at this launch of the two branches and the Visa Debit Card. I also wish to particularly thank the Access Bank, Group Deputy Managing Director, Mr Herbert Wigwe for having travelled all the way from Nigeria, to come and be part of this event today. It now gives me great pleasure and honour to declare the Acacia and Longarces branches officially launched.
In the upper storeys of the Bank he placed pavilions which are derivatives of the ends of the Secretariat blocks in New Delhi. As Lord Keynes said in his speech at the closing plenary session of the Bretton Woods Conference on 22 July 1944, "it has been our task to find a common measure, a common standard, a common rule applicable to each and not irksome to any. We have been operating, moreover, in a field of great intellectual and technical difficulty. We have had to perform at one and the same time the tasks appropriate to the economist, to the financier, to the politician, to the journalist, to the propagandist, to the lawyer, to the statesman – even, I think to the prophet and soothsayer. … We have shown that a concourse of 44 nations are actually able to work together at a constructive task in amity and unbroken concord. If we can continue in a larger task as we have begun in this limited task, there is hope for the world." The IMF is still the only international body with the legitimacy, as well as staff and expertise, to build and defend a successful international financial system. It is important, therefore, that we not accept uncritically the way it has developed, and we must examine closely how far changes in international financial markets require us to understand the consequences of limits to IMF lending and the implications of those limits for borrowing countries and private creditors alike.

Much has been said, and, more importantly, achieved in the area of transparency in recent years. There has been an explosion of codes and standards on different aspects of economic and financial policy in recent years. So much so, that some countries are claiming that the process needs to slow down. It is certainly important to recognise that the appropriate codes and standards for a country at one stage of economic development may not be appropriate to countries at other stages. I say advisedly "may", because in each individual case the argument has to be made. But if it is accepted that codes and standards are likely to reflect different stages of development, then it is even more important that countries make clear to which codes and standards they are actually adhering. That is why countries should not be able to opt out of "transparency about transparency". Following the production of pilot transparency reports on a number of countries, including the UK and Argentina, the IMF has now made rapid progress in producing reports on the observance of standards and codes (ROSCs). As of April 2001, 110 ROSC modules had been completed for 43 countries, of which 76 have been published covering 31 countries. India has recently had a ROSC published on fiscal transparency. It is critical that monitoring of the observance of standards and codes be fully integrated into IMF surveillance under Article IV. Here implementation is urgent.
If the forecasts for inflation and the real economy are assessed to show a desirable development, market expectations will provide a reasonable forecast for coming monetary policy decisions. However, it is important to remember that new data are being received all the time, which must be taken into account in our monetary policy. The fact that implied forward rates are being used in our forecasting work should not be regarded as a commitment regarding future monetary policy. There is considerable uncertainty over future macroeconomic developments, and this means that market expectations of the future repo rate path may often be incorrect. This is also illustrated by the considerable uncertainty intervals around the assumed interest rate path (see Figure 4). The current monetary policy situation The principles that I have just discussed apply primarily when we produce and publish complete forecasts in connection with Inflation Reports. At the intervening meetings, we start from the forecast that applied in the previous Inflation Report and study how the information received since then affects both the interest rate assumption and the forecasts. Our next monetary policy meeting on 27 April will involve making this kind of intermediate, more qualitative assessment. The implied forward rates on which the forecast in the Inflation Report published on 23 February was based reflected a 15-day average as per 9 February. On 16 February, an unexpectedly low CPI outcome was published for January.

These reforms, it is said, may work very well, but they should be postponed until later because they are not useful for exiting the current crisis. Firstly, some of these reforms, such as those conducive to hiring, would clearly have immediate effects in resolving the main problem of the current crisis, namely unemployment. Yet while it is true that other structural reforms would not have immediate direct effects but would yield future results, the decisions economic agents take today depend greatly on how they see the future. What has brought decisions to consume and invest today to a grinding halt is mistrust of the future; accordingly, if confidence about the future is restored, that would have highly beneficial effects not only in the medium run but now, in the present. In sum, tomorrow we'll broach again the financial and real-sector crisis facing us. And how to exit it. We’ll be reflecting on how to break the vicious circles of the lack of confidence. We'll discuss how it is naive to believe these vicious circles can be broken only in one place, concluding that what we need is a recovery in the confidence of all economic agents. These measures cannot be taken only at the national level; the crisis is a global one and attempts should be made to coordinate action to the full worldwide. That makes very strong demands on all multilateral fora and institutions, governments, politicians, central bankers, supervisors and all those with responsibilities in the matter.
Temporary price level target Yellen's predecessor as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has proposed a solution that can be regarded as a special application of a makeup strategy. 24 This is based on the central bank under certain circumstances not having a target for inflation, but instead for the development of the price level. The difference may appear subtle, as inflation is the change in the price level, but it is potentially quite important. Let us assume that both the inflation target and the target increase for the price level is 2 per cent. If, in an inflation-targeting regime, one has an inflation rate that undershoots the 2 per cent target for a period of time, it is the central bank's task to bring it back on target. The fact that inflation has deviated from the target before is not important – “bygones are bygones”. But if it is instead the development of the price level that is the target and inflation deviates from 2 per cent, then this must be “made up for”. The principle is thus the same as Yellen's makeup strategy, but here one has clarified in advance that the target refers to the price level rather than inflation. The differences between a price level target and an inflation target is illustrated in Figure 7. 25 If something unexpected occurs in an inflation-targeting regime that causes inflation to be lower than the target, it is enough to bring inflation back to 2 per cent again (the bottom right figure).

It may not be so much a question of purely economic aspects, but rather what is feasible according to social conventions and possible to create understanding for. During the period we have had a negative repo rate, individuals have not faced negative interest rates and thus not needed to pay for having money in the bank. 6 I assume here that –0.5 per cent, that is, the lowest level to which the Riksbank has ever cut the repo rate, is a  lower bound for how much the rate can be cut. This assumption can of course be discussed, and I shall return to this shortly. 4 [24]  But if the repo rate becomes sufficiently negative, this may happen. On a theoretical level, one can argue that the policy would then be more powerful and have a greater effect on the economy – that the so-called monetary policy transmission mechanism would function better. But this also risks leading to various types of problem. As I see it, the biggest problem is not the economic arguments usually raised, such as the general public wanting to empty their bank accounts and hold cash instead. Holding savings in cash is, when it comes down to it, troublesome and costly and given that most people in Sweden are getting used to living without cash it would not be a natural thing to do. The threshold would probably be relatively high here. The main problem, as I see it, is another one.
We need professionals who can develop fintech solutions, instead of merely being users of it. Given the intellect and work ethic of our students and professionals, I am confident that this is an objective we can achieve without difficulty. 34. As mentioned, fintech is, comparatively speaking, a nascent industry. That is why insights about the industry, such as the kinds of jobs available, the skillsets required, and career path, remains largely a mystery to outsiders, let alone fresh graduates and new joiners. We want to help these new comers gain industry knowledge and practical industry experience. Of course, we have not forgotten about existing banking practitioners. It is equally important, if not more, to upskill practitioners and deepen their fintech knowledge. 35. In order to do this, we have joined hands with the industry and local universities to launch the Industry Project Masters Network (IPMN) scheme. Starting from September this year, months-long internship opportunities will be provided to some master students for them to gain hands-on experience in areas including AI and federated learning. By the end of this year, we will also launch a new fintech module for the Enhanced Competency Framework to raise the professional competencies of existing banking practitioners. 36. A collective effort with the banking industry as well as our strategic partners will enable us to nurture home-grown fintech talent and maintain our competitive edge as an international finance centre. Nurturing ecosystem with Funding and policies 37.

From that point on, expected returns on all assets would be lower. Higher saving was often touted as the possible reason for lower interest rates ahead of the crisis. At the time the argument was first made, during the early part of the last decade, the suggested “glut” in saving was often associated with the fast-growing East Asian countries. Some economists, notably Thomas Piketty, have suggested that, because the rich generally save more, widening income inequality may have contributed to the trend. Others have pointed out the importance of demographic factors. Whatever the underlying cause, the important point is that higher desired saving would tend to have a similar impact on the price of all long-dated assets, whatever their risk. That’s why it looks like a good candidate for the co-movement between equities and bonds evident in the early (pre-2001) part of Chart 2. The other determinants of asset prices – the level of, and uncertainty about, future economic growth – tend to have differing effects on the two asset classes. Lower expected growth will reduce investment demand and, by shifting that schedule to the left (Chart 3), will tend to reduce the equilibrium risk-free interest rate. Future profits will be discounted more generously, as before, but now the profits themselves will be lower. So despite a lower interest rate, and a rise in bond prices, equity prices fall on impact (Chart 6(b), which  5  Friedman and Schwartz (1963).
Plus, the somewhat stronger growth of trading partners and the depreciation of the real exchange rate should also boost non-mining exports. And last but not least, there is the increased monetary impulse that has been added to the economy. As for domestic inflation, it has returned back to the Central Bank target of 3 percent in annual terms faster than expected. In recent months, CPI inflation has been driven by energy price increases that reflect both the higher dollar price of fuels and the depreciation of the peso. The impact of the depreciation on other prices in the CPI basket has been in line with expectations; Core inflation (i.e., the CPIEFE that excludes foodstuffs and energy) has also risen, although at a slower pace than headline CPI. Inflation expectations have remained at 3 percent in the projection horizon, with a slight increase in the near term. The baseline scenario assumes that y-o-y CPI inflation will rise temporarily to the 3.5 to 4 percent range, in the coming months, reflecting the direct propagation of the peso depreciation to the prices of goods and services. The lower use of installed capacity – proxied by the behavior of output – should mitigate inflationary pressures and the direct effects of the depreciation. As I just said, the credibility and consolidation of our inflationtargeting scheme also help. Therefore, already by the end of 2014 headline inflation should move closer to 3 percent, where it should stay until the end of the projection horizon, that is, the first quarter of 2016.

10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 7  CPI inflation (*) (annual change, percent)  10  CPIEFE inflation (*) (annual change, percent)  10 10  10  8  8  8  8  6  6  6  6  4  4  4  4  2  2  2  2  0  0  0  0  -2  -2  -2  -2  -4  -4  -4  -4  07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16  07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16  Dec.'2013 Report  Mar. '2014 Report  (*) Gray area, as from the first quarter of 2014, shows forecast. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE). Figure 8 MPR and expectations (percent) 9  9  7  7  8  8  6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 07  08  09  10  11  MPR  FBS second half March 2014  12  13  EES March 2014  14  15  16  Forward, March 2014 Report  Source: Central Bank of Chile. BIS central bankers’ speeches  11
As one strategy to enhance cross-border financial activities, Turkish banks and relevant entities might wish to consider being members of Bursa Suq Al Sila’ to facilitate liquidity management in the Islamic financial market. The Bursa Suq Al-Sila’ is the world’s first end-to-end Islamic multi-currency commodity trading platform to enhance liquidity management for Islamic financial institutions. This fully-electronic platform facilitates sukuk structuring, Islamic financing and investment transactions including inter-bank placements and customer deposits, by applying the concept of murabaha and tawarruq. Since its establishment in 2009, 23 Commodity Trading Participants from Malaysia, the Middle East and Europe have been registered in Bursa Suq Al-Sila’, contributing to the growth in its trading volume where 1370 trades were recorded in Q1 2011 with a total value of USD18 billion as compared to 728 trades in the final quarter of 2010 that totalled to an estimated USD11 billion. Thirdly, opportunities to collaborate in the area of Islamic fund management. Following the launch of the first Participation Bank Index by the Istanbul Stock Exchange earlier this year, the investment products introduced in the Turkish market have been expanded to include Islamic equity funds and products.

4  ECB (2015), Financial Stability Review, May 2015. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  3. The regulatory challenge As I said, however, CMU is for the longer-term. For the medium-term, SME financing in the euro area will still mainly come from banks. So we need to make sure that there are no unnecessary obstacles to that process. And this brings me to the third challenge facing banks – the regulatory challenge. The regulatory agenda since the crisis has no doubt been essential. Banks had too little capital, too much short-term funding, too high leverage, and created too great a cost for society when they failed. The reforms that have been introduced so far have increased resilience and, in extremis, made banks less costly to resolve. And there is no reason why this should, in principle, diminish the ability of banks to serve the real economy – research suggests, for example, that higher bank capital has no negative impact on lending. 5 But as new regulation accumulates, we know that it can also come with costs as well. In the economics jargon, policymakers always have to be watchful that, in attempting to internalise externalities, they do not inadvertently create new externalities. The possible risks can be summarised under the headings of complexity, clarity and consistency. As regulations have built up since 2009, they have tended to introduce more complexity, and with that comes an inevitable cost in terms of compliance.