global challenges affecting russia are concerned, we should first of all highlight a long - term reduction in hydrocarbon prices and the slowing economic growth in china. these challenges nourish each other with regard to having an adverse impact on commodity prices. as a result of the ‘ shale revolution ’ opec has lost its opportunity to influence oil prices. the latter started to be determined by the profitability threshold of the majority of shale projects. moreover, energy - saving technologies and an active use of alternative energy sources will also affect oil prices in the long run. one cannot brush aside this prospect the way it was with the ‘ shale revolution ’. a quick return to high oil prices is not expected, so the russian economy must learn to live amid low prices for oil and gas. overall, we should abandon the habit of connecting optimistic target forecasts with growing oil prices, rather than own efforts to restructure the economy. the second external challenge facing russia is the changed growth model and the slowing economic growth in china, which also affect the russian economy due to the downward pressure on commodity prices. according to our estimates, 1 percentage point of china ’ s slowing gdp may cause a loss of almost 0. 5 percentage points in annual rates of economic growth in russia in the medium term. it should be noted that this is true if the current structure of our relationship and the current structure of trade turnover persist. the chinese economy now ranks second in the world and the role played by that country in the global economy and financial markets has increased considerably. the challenge for russia is to reorient to the fast growing sectors of the chinese economy related to consumption and post - industrial economy ( the so - called tertiary sector ). low growth rates of the world economy intensify the need to carry out structural and institutional reforms in many countries to remove the obstacles to a faster economic growth. insufficient attention was paid to such transformations over the past decade. it seemed that nothing should be changed and the global economy showed a confident growth. structural reforms are a formidable challenge. they are often painful, infringe on somebody ’ s interests, and face counteraction. each country should judge for itself what structural reforms are the most important ones and which of them may be implemented with due account of political, cultural and other factors. bis central bankers ’ speeches a special emphasis should be made on monetary policy challenges facing the central banks throughout the world. easy monetary policies helped stabilise the situation in advanced countries, but the quantitative easing

point of the corridor system. second, the marginal lending rate is the interest charged on overnight lending from the eurosystem to banks. it constitutes the ceiling of the corridor system. third, the deposit facility rate governs the remuneration for excess reserves that our counterparties hold with the eurosystem as overnight deposits. it constitutes the floor to the corridor system. moreover, it also provides the floor on interbank market rates as banks have no incentive to lend funds below this rate in the market. setting the deposit rate to a value below zero would imply that the remuneration for excess reserves in the euro area is negative. in other words, banks are charged for making overnight deposits with the ecb. from a technical point of view, we are ready to implement a negative deposit facility rate. and, in general, there are constellations conceivable where the eurosystem could deploy such a negative rate, if it is deemed required by our mandate to safeguard price stability. so what are the pros and cons? theoretically, a negative deposit rate may provide additional accommodation. in the current environment of excess liquidity, the relevant overnight interest rates have shifted close to the deposit rate. in this situation, reductions in the deposit rate could push down overnight interest rates further. at the same time, possible caveats and unintended side effects of this move have to be kept in mind. in particular, crossing the zero line can set off actions in the market that may run counter to the central bank ’ s policy easing intentions. for example, there can be a substitution by private actors towards cash which becomes the highest yielding short - term asset. similarly, the money - holding sector may promote financial innovations that could emulate currency and allow tax avoidance. these actions may undermine the underlying purpose of the move towards negative deposit rates. overall, the consequences are subject to considerable margins of uncertainty as such a move has never been observed in the eurosystem or in any other major currency area in the world. how do these considerations differ from those underlying the move by denmark ’ s or the swiss central bank? both countries apply a fixed exchange rate policy vis - a - vis the euro area. in contrast, the ecb does not consider the euro exchange rate as a policy target. this adds an additional complexity to the monetary policy objective function. what could be the effects of introducing a negative deposit facility rate on the euro exchange rate? one can in principle single out three factors that would