, if we now had the levels of credit losses from 2011, as a consequence of poor risk management and unfavourable business environment, the banking sector would have operated at a loss in 2022 and would have had a drastically lower result in 2023! the development of digitalisation also had a positive bearing on strong growth of the scope and quality of services. net income from the purchase of foreign currency reflects the rising number and volume of transactions amid accelerated growth in foreign trade exchange, as well as the fact that serbia is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination! all of this would not have been possible had we not ensured relative stability of the dinar exchange rate, stability of the financial system, strong investment growth, improved business performance in the real sector, rising living standards, and the accelerated digitalisation of financial services! today, serbia has the lowest unemployment rate and the highest employment rate ever! because of all this, the difference between two absolute data, without considering the essence, has not made anyone an expert! quite the opposite. therefore, i once again ask individuals to act professionally and seriously when making evaluations that have no other purpose than to create noise and obstruct progress. this will not slow us down ; on the contrary. today, i will repeat here again that we do not exist for ourselves, no one, not even banks, but for our clients. and only in that interaction which gathers everyone's interests, can success last. therefore, the national assembly will soon discuss four extremely important laws that we have proposed, and for which a public debate has been held. these laws are important for financial services consumers, the banking industry, and the entire system. they are only a part of our response to the new conditions in which we live and work, and in july, i remind you, we introduced the concept of open banking into our regulatory framework. regarding current macroeconomic trends, i begin with the conclusion that we have brought inflation in serbia back within the target band, preserved the country's financial stability, as well as economic growth, which is returning to its high pre - pandemic levels! 3 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches 1. inflation entered our target band of 3 + / - 1. 5 pp in may, has remained there ever since and will stay there going forward. 2. the inflation profile allowed us to start easing our monetary policy in june, but at a cautious pace. since then, we have cut the key policy rate

jorgovanka tabakovic : the best investment in the future is investment in people, cooperation, and diversification speech by dr jorgovanka tabakovic, governor of the national bank of serbia, at the second banking summit, belgrade, 5 december 2024. * * * esteemed ladies and gentlemen, dear hosts, dear colleagues and most of all – dear friends, this gathering is a meeting and conversation between friends, and i always follow the basic idea to " be a friend to a friend. " and what i can wish for the banking systems and sectors of the countries in the region is that they cooperate with their regulator and supervisor – in our case the two are under one roof, but elsewhere they are separated – and have the kind of cooperation that we have in serbia, and which resulted in the fact that we are organising this summit for the second year, and i truly expect it to become a tradition. that we do not see it only as a duty to meet, but to truly rejoice at seeing each other and that our meetings bring an even greater closeness which implies an open discussion about problems and solving them together, because as one of the members of the board of directors, when preparing this summit, modestly said : " yes, the banking sector is the most orderly system in serbia. " some of the journalists say provocatively : " and how do you protect the banking sector by favouring it? " my answer was that from 2012 until recently, banks returned more than eur 120 million directly to clients on account of the inherited rules of applying different exchange rates to loan approval and repayment, unilateral collection of certain charges... so you can see how favourably the governor of the national bank of serbia behaves towards the banks and how much this costs them. since october, i have been in the habit of opening addresses such as this one with a congratulatory message to serbian citizens on the investment grade credit rating, which our country deserved a long time ago! and everything we will talk about today is a part of our historic success! at the first banking summit, i wished that this gathering of ours would become a tradition! two years does not make a tradition yet – but it is a step in that direction. however, 103 years is a tradition and i congratulate the association of serbian banks on the 103rd anniversary, which you marked yesterday. where are we compared to the period a year ago? inflation has