we should respond to together is the development of digital technologies. central banks need to adapt their policies to changed circumstances, but also to consider how technology can be adjusted to people, so that we can rule the technology, and not the other way around. we are aware that the latest and most up - todate does not necessarily mean the best, and every initiative which can affect the stability of the system must be adequately assessed with all the risks acknowledged. introduction of technologies whose safety was not sufficiently examined would shake confidence in central banks, and that is not an option. accelerated technological progress has also implications for productivity and interest rates, and thereby for monetary policy implementation. the development of e - commerce changes the method of pricing and the transparency of this process, which can affect inflation and the transmission channels. apart from this, technological advances facilitate deeper integration into global value chains, making domestic prices more sensitive to the effects from the international environment, which is what we are witnessing in the wake of the pandemic. technology has a significant impact on upgrading the payment system. however, we must not forget those who do not find new payment technologies user - friendly. our task is not to impose technological innovation on people, but rather to accommodate the change in preferences in the safest possible way. the question of security of data stored outside the country of their origin is also one of the challenges that we must jointly respond to. another inevitable topic is the central bank digital currency and cryptocurrencies in general. it is a 3 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches fact that cryptocurrencies are digital assets – not currencies, and that they need to be regulated as such. as the ecb president ms lagarde recently said, all actors in the financial sector and the regulatory authorities should call things by their real name. it should be noted in this context that the nbs was among the first to adopt a law regulating the terms and conditions of trade in cryptocurrencies, i. e. digital assets. ( slide 8 ) despite all the challenges, we are ready to take big strides to support development potentials. in october 2018, we established a state - of - the - art instant payment system that was launched a month before its eu counterpart. its functionalities are upgraded on a daily basis. as a result, instant payments are also possible at points of sale and by scanning a qr code on bills. a good example of our proactive approach is the possibility

milestone, i. e. the method of reducing the costs of monetary policy implementation, while at the same encouraging private sector lending and ensuring another mechanism of influencing temporary shocks. ( slide 4 ) that our monetary policy is adequate is confirmed by international institutions, while the continuity of results in delivering what was agreed has ensured our credibility in international relations. record inflows of fdis in the years before the pandemic and the inflow of three billion euros even in the pandemic 2020 are the best evidence that the position of international institutions is also shared by international investors. owing to responsible and coordinated economic policy conduct in the previous years, citizens ’ trust was built, and room created for strong and timely actions during the pandemic. these are the very reasons why serbia, among the first countries in europe, returned to the pre - crisis level of economic activity already at the beginning of this year, and why serbia will record gdp growth between 6 % and 7 % cumulatively in the previous and the current year. ( slide 5 ) i will mention just a few examples. in a country with the experience of hyperinflation during the 1990s, a country where the average annual inflation in the period between the 2008 financial crisis and 2012 measured 9 %, in the past nine years we have restored confidence in the domestic currency and achieve that dinar savings grow even in conditions of pandemicinduced crisis. also, for years, the exchange rate of the dinar against the euro has been relatively stable, and corporates and citizens know that they can plan investments and consumption with no fear of abrupt changes in the exchange rate. at the same time, we have cured the banking system by resolving npls and reducing them by over 80 % in the past six years. having reacted immediately at the onset of the crisis we sent a clear message that the central bank is still the guarantor of the stability, whereby we preserved business and consumer confidence, contributed to the preservation of jobs and prevented panic. we did not wait for the problem to occur to start working on the solutions. for this reason, the imf assessed that the serbian economy is coping rather well with the challenges imposed by the pandemic, and that strong economic recovery is underway. dear friends, ( slide 6 ) i will now consider two major challenges ahead of central bankers. the first is the change brought by climate policies. even though the dialogue about whether central banks have a mandate to act in the area of climate change