Moreover, the modernization of public transportation, housing and water resource management, as well as health and education spending should translate into better private sector return from cost reduction and productivity increase. Better outlook for returns should enhance the charm of Thailand as an investment destination. We also need to focus on service as well as manufacturing sectors. In fact, the service sector is larger than manufacturing in employment terms. The Bank of Thailand can help in this endeavor by continuing to strengthen our financial infrastructure. Aside from broadening people’s access to financial services, we also aim to promote competition in the financial sector. Competition, while being mindful of the risks involved, will enhance efficiency as well as knowledge building and transfer. With good prudential supervision in the background, the pressure of competition will help ensure that our financial institutions can perform well in the globally competitiveness environment. To this end, better accounting standard, for example, the adoption of IAS 39, is expected to strengthen financial sector’s resiliency to adverse shocks and will bring forward better investment climate. 4  BIS Review 33/2008  Going hand in hand with modern infrastructure has to be skilled human resource. Studies on labor market condition and my dialogues with entrepreneurs, Thai and foreign, have confirmed that labor quality shortage is the key problem here as well as everywhere else in the world. To be sure, formal schooling is an important source of skill and quality development, but experience in the workplace contributes no less.

23.05.2018  “Strengthening the economic governance of the euro: short-term priorities and the long-term view” High Level Seminar. Banco de España Luis M. Linde Governor  Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me first extend a warm welcome to you all to the Banco de España. Thank you for joining us today in this seminar that addresses the pressing and very important topic of the Economic Governance of the Euro: Short-term Priorities and the Long-term View. I would like to thank the panelists who have been so kind to accept our invitation; we are very pleased to have among us a long list of distinguished participants that would certainly throw much welcomed light on the discussion. The timing of this conference is particularly relevant. After years of low growth, Europe is now experiencing a robust recovery which opens up a window of opportunity to make progress in the governance reform agenda before the next economic downturn unfolds. Supported by expansionary monetary policy, real GDP in the Euro Area has expanded for 19 quarters in a row. Stronger price dynamics are yet to materialize, but we are confident that if we are prudent, patient and persistent, our monetary policy measures will be effective in achieving the medium-term goals. Price stability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving sustained and balanced growth. In fact, one important lesson we can draw from the first twenty years of the EMU is the need to improve the area’s resilience to large macroeconomic shocks and to increase its stabilization capacity.