to thank our two most important collaborators ; the world bank and the malaysia association of money services business for their support in making project greenback 2. 0 a success story that we can be proud of, for many years to come. i am proud to see how the hard work you put in have translated into impressive tangible results. these include a substantial number of new customers being on - boarded for digital remittance services, multifold growth in e - remittance transactions and significant reduction in the cost of sending money. a tiny difference in the remittance costs translates into a huge saving for the migrant workers and their families. specific to sabah, reducing the remittance costs by merely 1 % means an additional rm24 million in the hands of migrant workers – this will benefit thousands of households in the receiving countries. overall, this supports the regulatory objective of promoting greater usage of formal remittance channels, a common goal which is shared by our partner, the world bank. i would like to end by sharing some aspirations about what should we do next after project greenback. experimental economists michael kremer, esther duflo and abhijit banerjee, recent nobel laureates in economics showed us how the big problem of poverty, could be tackled by the ability to break it down into more precise questions. project greenback 2. 0 is indeed an experiment which allows us to seek answers to the questions that we never understood before. these include the motivation behind the migrant workers for not choosing the formal remittance channels and their propensity to use digital financial services. we have made good progress in understanding these issues. but that is not enough. we wish to understand more about how remittances can be further leveraged to fight poverty. this includes developing greater understanding into : how remittances can be linked to insurance and investment products which would help to break the vicious cycle of poverty ; how digital payment and remittances can be used as a tool to support the needs of small rural businesses ; from education perspective, how to channel remittances to support provision of quality education for poor children ; and from gender perspective, how we can use remittances to drive women entrepreneurships particularly in the era of digital economy. moving forward, these are the areas that we will continue to explore ; and in doing so i have no doubt that there will be more opportunities for all of us to work together again. 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches

or lower economic growth until the real exchange rate returns to equilibrium. in the absence of a nominal exchange rate channel the adjustment process would tend to be slow. now let me briefly turn to the policy implications the aforementioned issues pose. the ecb policy stance on erm ii ( ecb, 2003 ) emphasizes the primacy of the inflation objective over the exchange rate stability. approaching the emu in the context of an it regime seems quite a plausible option, and one which is even encouraged by the ecb. the period of residence in the erm ii needs however to be as short as possible, so as to avoid the inherent incompatibility of these two targets in the face of the balassa - samuelson effects and increased capital inflows. the countries approaching the emu from a fixed exchange rate regime might have a different perspective on the subject. however, even these countries will experience the balassa - samuelson effects, facing a difficulty to reconcile the fulfilment of the exchange rate and price stability criteria. at the same time, given the wide fluctuation bands that are foreseen by the erm ii template, the credibility gain is likely to be marginal. ( iii ) policy implications as a conclusion, let me re - emphasize the need for a careful approach to the emu in that a certain degree of real economic and structural convergence is needed. the emu membership can not be delayed by much however. first, a really high degree of economic convergence might require a lengthy period of time to be achieved and people could perceive an enlargement without emu as incomplete. second, in adopting the single currency the exchange rate risk will be eliminated, resulting in positive impulses to the financial market development. thirdly, the endogeneity forces of trade and financial integration discussed in the literature might be an additional driver of real convergence that is worth exploring. neither economic theory nor central banking practices offer an optimal approach to erm ii from the point of view of the monetary regime. the alternative theories agree however, on the need to stay there for the shortest time possible * * * to conclude my speech, let me briefly say a few words on the albanian case. see begg et al., ( 2002 ). it is worth remembering that the maastricht criteria were designed to ensure the nominal convergence of industrial economies with roughly similar economic structures. their validity in ensuring the convergence of transition economies is an issue that is hotly contested by several economists