the ten - year eurobond in dollars in november 2020, with the simultaneous fx hedging operation, our country achieved the lowest price of financing thus far in the international financial market – 1. 066 %. most of the funds raised in this transaction were used for the early repayment of a significant part of the remaining debt under expensive dollar eurobonds issued in 2011 at a high yield rate of 7. 50 %. this way, even during the crisis, serbia continued the practice of responsible behaviour replacing the previously agreed expensive dollar debts by cheaper ones. according to the assessment of rating agencies, in order to move to the investment - grade rating, we need policy continuity, further growth in exports and fx reserves, continued fdi inflow and sustainable public finances. as all of this is “ in line ” with our medium - term projections, we estimate that serbia will have an investment grade within a relatively short period. serbia is also facing work on the “ green agenda ”. as for the nbs, i can promise that we will not allow the activities of the central bank to be the basis for any greenwashing, whereby funds intended for environmental projects are used for other purposes. considering that this forum is intended to be a “ two - way street ”, i invite everyone present to give their contribution by personal example, because it is not only economic policy makers that should be aware of this, but also each and every individual. we all can and must give our contribution. you will also talk about digital economy and creative industry. i am sure that ana will speak about how far serbia has come in this field, because the task of the institutions is to make people ’ s lives and business easier so that they can use time, as the most precious resource, in the best way possible. for more than two and a half years now, payment service users in serbia can make instant payments quickly, safely and easily, at any time, from any place. payees also receive funds quickly. this is possible thanks to the cutting - edge technology of the nbs ips system, in which, since october 2018, around 47 million transactions have been executed, with a total value of around rsd 445 bn. for us, this is the only real indicator that instant payments have become the standard quality of service for payment service users in serbia. we all also quickly got used to the possibility to pay in just a few seconds monthly bills of the largest service providers with the standardised

##ion was the additionally boosted dinar and fx liquidity thanks to coordinated measures and activities of the nbs and the government. an almost two - digit growth in domestic loans to the non - monetary sector in 2020 was aided by the most favourable dinar borrowing terms, followed by the measures stimulating sustainable household lending, moratorium on the repayment of loans, approval of guarantee scheme loans, as well as the maintained low interest rates in the euro area money market. interest rates on dinar corporate loans approached the rates on euro corporate loans, and their movements at even lower levels in some months resulted in greater use of dinar loans by the corporate sector. this was undoubtedly facilitated by our measure to provide banks with an incentive for dinar lending under the guarantee scheme. financing through issuance of dinar bonds under favourable terms enabled companies to be flexible in managing cash flows, which is especially important during crisis episodes. all this taken together pushed the npl share in total loans further down compared to the precrisis period. in spite of the large package of monetary and fiscal stimuli, inflation, as in the seven previous years, remained low in 2020, averaging 1. 6 %. the preservation of low and stable inflation was underpinned primarily by the maintained stability of the exchange rate and by the anchored inflation expectations, which also attest to the credibility of monetary policy. at the beginning, i said that in the pre - crisis period, we built buffers for a prompt and strong response, but we also did that during the crisis. at end - april this year, gross fx reserves stood at eur 14 bn, up by more than eur 600 mn from end - 2019. taken together – price stability, maintained stability of the exchange rate and the provision of additional liquidity to banks also contributed to the preservation of business and consumer confidence, while the moratorium led to higher disposable income of corporates and households. ( slide 13 ) therefore, it does not come as a surprise that in times of crisis serbia ’ s credit rating has been preserved, and even improved, according to moody ’ s. the result becomes even more significant when i add the fact that in the period from february 2020 to april 2021 almost 60 countries had their credit rating downgraded. all three rating agencies – moody ’ s, standard & poor ’ s and fitch estimated that serbia faced the pandemic in a much better macroeconomic position and with significantly narrowed imbalances relative to ten years ago