banknotes with respect to enhance their quality. also, the new denomination of 10 000 leke was added to the five existing denominations. on 30 september 2019, the bank of albania put into circulation the first denominations of the new series, 200 leke and 5000 leke. the new series of denominations 1000 leke and 10 000 leke banknotes will be put into circulation within 2020. the launching of the new series was accompanied by an informative and educational campaign, taking place throughout the republic of albania. with respect to implementing the parliament resolution, the objective of the educational campaign, was also making public aware to not use the terminology “ new lek – old lek, but simply lek ”. the bank of albania is the national authority responsible for holding and managing the official international reserves of the republic of albania. in this process, the bank of albania is guided by a hierarchy list of objectives, which imply the maintaining of international reserve liquidity, its security and earnings. at the end of 2019, the international reserve is invested into liquid assets with maturities of 0 - 3 years, and around 84 % of portfolio is invested in securities issued by high quality rating institutions. the return on the investment of reserve is positive, but at low levels due to an environment with low interest rates. the bank of albania is also one of the public statistical agencies. in this framework, this year it was completed the compilation of statistics on the external sector in compliance with eurostat requirements and it is being worked to build the “ micro data ”. as one of the institutions involved in the national plan for european integration, the bank of albania has accomplished all its obligations for reporting, and it has integrated the recommendations of the european commission in fulfilling is daily duties. the bank of albania has continuously been transparent and present to the public through the visual and online means of communication. this communication has aimed to be clear and understandable. lastly, special attention has been given to the improvement of the internal governance of the institution. following the establishment of the operational risk management function, the implementation of the platform on business continuity management was finalised in 2019. this platform orients the units of the bank of albania to react effectively for ensuring the continuity of critical processes during a crisis, and to recover the normal activity as fast as possible. the platform on business continuity management overcame successfully its test, where the measures foreseen in this platform enabled the bank of albania to normally continue its activity during the pandemic period.

workers. 4 i would now like to put forward some general principles which, i believe, should help to define it. first, this incomes agreement should involve distributing among firms and workers the diminished income in the national economy vis - a - vis the rest of the world that the recent cost increases entail. i must insist on this point again : the aim is to distribute costs. all the actors involved must sustain a loss. workers will not be able to maintain their purchasing power in the short term, nor will firms be able to maintain their profit margins. were workers to bear the full brunt of the adjustment, in the medium term firms would also suffer the consequences in the form of a sharp drop in demand. conversely, if in the current situation we were to place the full burden of the adjustment on firms, many of them would be forced to close and many others would experience significant losses in competitiveness that would affect their future investment capacity. all of this would ultimately undermine job creation and our citizens ’ well - being. indeed, the latest information available suggests that this sharing of costs between workers and firms is already taking place. on the workers ’ side, they are undoubtedly losing purchasing power. indeed, the collective bargaining agreements registered in spain in january and february this year reveal that wage settlements have reacted moderately to the high inflation environment for the time being. specifically, in february the wage increase agreed for 2022 rose to 2. 3 % ( from the 1. 5 % wage settlement for 2021 ), a percentage clearly below the inflation rates observed in recent months and those expected for this year as a whole. when assessing these figures, it should be borne in mind that the collective bargaining system is highly inertial. the above figures basically reflect the outcome of multiyear collective bargaining agreements over the last two years in an inflationary environment that is very different from today ’ s. specifically, the figures for 2022 only include 19 agreements signed this year with a negotiated wage increase of 2. 6 %, affecting less than 15, 000 workers. therefore, they cannot be considered to offer a true picture of the state of collective bargaining in the early stages of this year. as regards businesses, various pieces of information show that in recent months they have not been fully passing the recent increase in their costs ( basically the cost of their energy inputs, but also of other inputs ) through to the prices of their products. in this respect, whether as a result of competitive pressures or demand weakness, profit margins appear