##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

the system until today, over 113 million transactions have been carried out, and the average time of execution is 1. 1 seconds. aware of our role of a change catalyst in our country, the national bank of serbia did not stop there. owing to a well established infrastructure of its ips system, it is introducing new, innovative instant payment solutions. by using the mobile banking application, our citizens can make instant payments at physical and online points of sale. they can pay their bills at any time of the day, from the comfort of their home, by scanning the qr code with their mobile banking applications. they can also make instant transfers of money at any time of the day, all year round, knowing only the mobile phone number registered by the payee for that service. we have our national dinacard and we have been constantly modernising it, aware of the importance of costs, but still more so of the independence and stability of the domestic financial system. we also established cooperation with two large international card systems ( american discover and chinese unionpay ), enabling the use of dinacard abroad as well. we have also seen a rise in cashless payments : in the past five years, the number of mobile banking users in the republic of serbia has risen by 254 %, while the number of electronic banking users has increased by 106 %. • • we enabled financial service consumers in the republic of serbia to conclude financial service contracts by using video identification, with full transparency, security and protection of citizens ’ rights. just like everyone, we sometimes ask ourselves whether our huge efforts have a purpose. however, the figures are reassuring and instil us with courage to move forward. as many as 306, 644 distance contracts have been concluded until today, up by 45 % compared to last year. answering market needs, we also adopted the law on digital assets, whereby serbia became one of the few countries in the world to regulate this area. by weighing up the benefits of introduction of a central bank digital currency in an environment where instant payments have fully taken root, we are currently analysing the introduction of a new financial instrument from the functional and technical aspect, while also examining the legal framework necessary for the functioning of the payment instrument. as regional cooperation is important for our country, we participate in the open balkan initiative, jointly contributing to the region ’ s prosperity. to enable more efficient and cheaper payment transactions in euros for citizens and businesses, the national bank of serbia introduced the systems of international