, maybe it is no coincidence that they and romania have folk songs called doina and daina, respectively, included in the intangible unesco heritage. romania is a mostly greek - orthodox christian country, the same as greece, cyprus and bulgaria. by the way, let me congratulate our bulgarian friends on the 140th anniversary of the establishment of their central bank! the legal and political systems of modern romania were inspired by the french ( i limit myself to just mentioning the napoleonic code ). this is also the case with modern romanian culture : prominent romanian artists such as constantin brancusi and george enescu achieved international recognition in paris. coming back to the legal system, the first constitution of modern romania in 1866 took after the belgian one. in addition, the nbr was founded based on the constitutive principles of the belgian central bank. the report to parliament underlying the establishment of the national bank of romania in 1880 saw belgium as – and i quote – “ a small but happy country ”, which developed rapidly with the assistance of its national bank, rendering it a suitable model for the institutional set - up of romania. as regards the neighbouring netherlands, the name of romania ’ s domestic currency – the leu ( meaning lion ) – comes from a dutch silver coin very popular in this part of europe in the 17th and 18th centuries : the lion - thaler. crossing the channel, our most beloved queen marie was the granddaughter of queen victoria of the united kingdom. it was her son, king charles ii, who reconstructed this royal palace. moving west again, let us not forget that the irish writer bram stoker took vlad the impaler as an inspiration for his famous novel dracula, creating a myth that romania is frequently associated with. returning to romania ’ s monarchs, under whose reign the country saw a remarkable modernisation, they belonged to the german house of hohenzollern - sigmaringen. as for the economic ties with germany, i would mention the fact that the name of the street where the old palace of the national bank of romania is located, i. e. lipscani, derives from leipzig ( lipsca in romanian ), the place where long ago local merchants used to bring their goods from. going further back in time, the saxons ( originating also in the luxembourg area ) settled in transylvania, which they called siebenburgen ( seven fortified towns ). one of these towns is sibiu or hermannstadt, where romania ’ s

factors, which were likely to dissipate. we did not see much demand side pressures and the chance of seeing a wage - price spiral was low. we genuinely felt that inflation was largely transitory. given the eventual outturns on growth and inflation, we feel that that reading was the right one and the'gradual and measured'policy response was the right call. where we are today? we are now at a more advanced stage of normalization. as a result, our policy objective has changed – from trying to ensure a smooth takeoff, now the focus is on getting the landing right. those of you who paid attention to our latest mpc statement would have noticed a couple of changes. we removed the'gradual and measured'language that we had been using in previous mpc statements to indicate that we are at an inflection point – that things are different from before – and that we are approaching the landing. in terms of getting closer to that landing point, we are guided by several considerations. first, we now need to focus on medium - term objectives - trying to make sure that ( i ) economic growth returns to its long - term potential ( 3 - 4 % range in thailand given our structural features ), ( ii ) inflation remains sustainably within our target range of 1 - 3 %, and ( iii ) the policy rate does not lead to financial imbalances via excessive financial leverage and risk - taking activities. one manifestation of that is the high build - up of household debt in thailand. second, we tend to be outlook dependent rather than data dependent because the data outturns are noisy. they are affected by short - term considerations, short - term noise, base effects, temporary measures. trying to base 2 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches policy decisions on the latest data outturn creates more noise rather than add stability to the market, which is the last thing policymakers want to do. third, we would like the landing point to be a roughly neutral policy stance, given that our economic trajectory is one where the economy is converging towards the potential level, inflation residing within the target range, and no build - up of imbalances. the context in thailand differs from many other countries. most countries are trying to overshoot the neutral rate ( that mythical r * ) to slow down the economy and bring inflation down to target. our situation is different. we do not need the policy rate to exceed a neutral policy rate, but we are