mario draghi : statistics to deliver price stability and mitigate systemic risk speech by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, at the sixth ecb statistics conference, frankfurt am main, 17 april 2012. * * * ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the executive board i would like to welcome you to our sixth biennial european central bank ( ecb ) statistics conference. i am very pleased to see that the event has once more attracted many distinguished participants. let me take the opportunity to share with you some thoughts on the topics on the agenda. as policy - makers in the fields of monetary policy and financial stability, we are deeply dependent on the work being done to maintain a stream of timely, relevant and reliable data. today and tomorrow you will have the opportunity to discuss ways of further strengthening the information basis for the fulfilment of the mandates given to the ecb and the european systemic risk board ( esrb ). key challenges the financial crisis has dramatically increased the need for very timely granular data. and it has led to a rethinking of a number of organisational and conceptual aspects in statistics. to give just one example, the traditional monetary statistics derived from individual banks ’ balance sheets are insufficient to gather information on financial groups that operate across borders and through non - bank subsidiaries. this is because the monetary statistics cover only the euro area and do not focus on the various kinds of risk to which banks are exposed and the adequacy of their capital in view of these risks. this means that it is vital to collect data consolidated at the level of banking groups or insurance groups. some of these data are already available at the national level for micro - supervisory purposes, but they are not always comparable across countries. the ecb, the esrb and the three new european supervisory authorities ( esas ) are all working to fill remaining data gaps and to meet the challenge of timely, frequent and high - quality data for their macro - prudential functions. moreover, there is an increasing need to consider measures of dispersion not just averages, and to consider micro data as well as macro aggregates. for financial stability purposes, in particular, a wider variety of granular data and indicators are needed, and more emphasis needs to be put on data “ outliers ” and so - called “ tail risks ”. as we have learned, systemic risk may stem from any part of the financial system, including the shadow banking sector. that is why we

what is possibly market sensitive or what is simply inconvenient. so here is yet another area of activity on which statisticians and legal experts need to focus. they need to ensure that legal frameworks and existing practices find the right balance between the need for confidentiality and the possibility of data sharing. conclusion let me conclude. as i hope all of my remarks have illustrated, statistics is a core activity of policy - making, and central banking in particular. right now, it is also a highly dynamic activity. i personally attach great importance to progress in the areas i have mentioned. i am convinced that your discussions today and tomorrow will offer valuable contributions on how best to face the challenges and how to take advantage of the opportunities. producing high - quality statistics on the financial sector remains a core task of a central bank. it is a central input not only for decision - making processes but also for the communication of our decisions, and thus, for the credibility of our actions. in light of these challenges, the central bank statisticians of the future will have to serve both areas – the pursuit of price stability as well as the support of financial stability. i wish you a very fruitful conference and very much look forward to the results of your deliberations. thank you for your attention. bis central bankers ’ speeches