carlos da silva costa : introductory speech at the joint banco de portugal, irving fisher committee on central bank statistics and european central bank conference introductory speech by mr carlos da silva costa, governor of the banco de portugal, at the joint banco de portugal, irving fisher committee and european central bank conference on " bridging measurement challenges and analytical needs of external statistics : evolution or revolution? ", lisbon, 17 february 2020. * * * good morning1, it is with great pleasure that i welcome you to our joint conference with the irving fisher committee on central bank statistics and the european central bank. over these two days, our distinguished guests will share their thoughts with us on how to improve our external statistics in the near future. external statistics are a crucial instrument to shape and support economic policy. the quality of external statistics decisively depends on the adequateness of the statistical concepts that are used, and on the reliability of the data collected. whether referring to the statistical universe or to a representative sample, data must always be based on concepts that are clear and consistent with the analytical objects to be studied. each day we face new social and economic phenomena, as well as new models for organising our work, the space in which we move, and even our leisure. the emergence of global value chains is just one resounding example. do we currently have the best statistical concepts and indicators to adequately grasp these ever - changing trends? probably not. but even with the right concepts, the data collected must also meet demanding quality and consistency standards. digitalisation of information storage and transmission offers an important opportunity to improve the effectiveness of data collection and representation. it is crucial, however, to ensure the quality, inviolability and integrity of the data collected, as well as maximum security in accessing and transmitting that data. whenever a given item of information becomes an object of public interest, there is a balance to be made between individual data protection and fluid data usage for research and policy purposes. this challenging compromise between confidentiality and access became particularly vivid when the statistics community stepped into the microdata domain. 1. when dealing with microdata, the first challenge is to ensure that individual information remains inviolable and secure during statistical and econometric treatment. the issue here is that data protection must not prevent the analyst from capturing the diversity behind averages, medians and modes. it is not hard to find occasions on which such diversity is in fact the very object of study : one can ask, for

, in june, in september and later. to your second question : i don't know what difference to make between a pause and a skip. i have not studied enough the press conference of my friend and colleague, mr 4 / 10 bis - central bankers'speeches powell. but as far as the ecb is concerned, i said what i said : we have hiked interest rates. unless there was a material change to our baseline, we will continue to hike at our next meeting. so, we are not thinking about pausing, as you can tell. i have two questions. i would like to ask you what do you need to see for core inflation actually coming down so it may give you the possibility to pause or to skip – or whatever you want to call it – in september? so, what needs to happen? then i have a question on the financial conditions. you are saying that they are forcefully tighter. what would you make rethink that it's enough when it comes to tight financial conditions? i wish i could give you the very simple answer where i say when we are there and when financing conditions are such, and the tightening has reached that level for corporates, for mortgages. but unfortunately, it doesn't work like that because what we know is the target that we have – which is price stability as defined by the 2 % medium term – added to which we want to be confident that it stays at that target of 2 %, which is why duration matters as well. but it is going to be a factor of those three elements that we will be looking at. so, it's the inflation outlook, which is every month, and every three months in particular, informed by all the new financial and economic data that we receive. it's the underlying inflation and the dynamics of it. i can assure you that we look at multiple cuts and subsets of inflation to arrive at what is the corest of the core. we don't limit our review at core ; we go further than that. we look at [ hicp ] stripped, super stripped, pcci. there's a whole variety of the prices and the inflation that we look at, and we need to see that. we need to be confident that it is heading down. for the moment, we have some of those measurements declining a bit, some of those sort of stable and others still going strongly. the third component is the strength of transmission, which we