ardian fullani : the development of economic information sources in albania opening speech by mr ardian fullani, governor of the bank of albania, at the seminar “ development and implementation of business and consumer confidence indices in albania ”, tirana, 2 july 2006. * * * the information on the markets and the most recent economic developments may be considered as the key to success for businesses in the modern times of rapid information technology developments ( it is enough taking a glance at the numerous pages of the reuters or the space the business news take to understand such developments ). although, at first, it may not seem to represent the most critical problem the albanian businesses are currently facing, such as electricity, informality etc., not far from now there will be the need of recognizing and analyzing the market in real time, in order to cope with the challenges of globalization. considered from a wider aspect, one ’ s country economy may not attain the international levels if the development policies are founded on a weak real information basis. the information on the most recent economic developments and expectations is crucial to the monetary policy decision - making process of the bank of albania. for long, it has been made clear that the process of maintaining price stability – our main objective – should be a forward - looking one. considering the current situation of national statistics, which at times become available with a time - lag of two years, it is understandable that our duty becomes extremely difficult. progress in the field of statistics and in other related fields may take a relatively long time. in the mean time, our decisions need to be based on sound basis. under this information gap, one of our solutions was the conduction of surveys of various economic agents. four years ago, the bank of albania began the assessment of business confidence index and consumer confidence index. these surveys are held quarterly with the assistance of instat and involve over 600 businesses of production, construction and services sectors and more than 1500 consumers. the collected information relates to the performance of prices, consumption, income, production, employment, investment and many other indicators, which assist significantly in the monetary policy decision - making process. many important steps have been made in this context, aiming at continuous methodological improvements of indices. to this purpose, the bank of albania, with the participation of foreign experts, has organized various meetings and discussions at a technical level, wherein the surveys results and analyses, as well as the related issues were presented. moreover, the bank has organized training workshops with ins

ardian fullani : overview of recent economic developments in albania speech by mr ardian fullani, governor of the bank of albania, on the monetary policy decision - making of the bank of albania ’ s supervisory council, tirana, 25 september 2013. * * * today, on 25 september 2013, the supervisory council of the bank of albania reviewed and approved the monthly monetary policy report. based on the most recent economic and monetary developments in albania, and following the discussions on their outlook, the supervisory council of the bank of albania decided to keep the key interest rate unchanged, at 3. 5 %. the council notes that the inflationary pressures from the real and financial sector of the economy are weak and will remain so. this setting requires persistence of the stimulating monetary policy in the period ahead. the monetary stimulus, transmitted through the low key interest rate and continuous injection of liquidity, provides the required conditions for meeting our inflation target in the mediumterm period. let me now proceed with an overview of economic developments and key issues discussed at today ’ s meeting. according to instat's data, annual inflation fell to 1. 2 % in august. the rapid fall in inflation over the past two months was mainly attributable to the low rise in food prices, and particularly in seasonal food prices. the negative inflation of non - food consumables and housing prices also drove annual inflation down. similar to the previous months, the inflation of other basket items'goods and services remained low and positive. despite the generally weak inflationary pressures, the supervisory council notes that the low inflation rates of the past two months were driven by transitory supply - side factors. the analysis of macroeconomic factors suggests that the contained consumer prices continue to reflect, to a large extent, the low demand in the economy and the negative output gap. the low capacity utilisation rates have subdued the rise in wages, producer prices and profit margins. imported inflation has also been low due to the low inflation rates in albania's trading partners and the stable exchange rate. lastly, the performance of liquidity and inflation expectations is in line with the low inflation rate. there is scarce new information about developments in the real economy in the second and third quarter of 2013. the analysis of available indirect data signals positive, albeit low, growth. unlike the previous quarters, the public sector was the main driver of aggregate demand growth in the second quarter, whereas net exports made a slightly negative contribution. private sector demand remains weak