is a major supplier of energy products to the eu and will in future become an even more predominant source of these products. the eu accounts for the majority of total accumulated foreign investment in russia. in 2003, more than two - thirds of foreign inflows into the country originated from eu countries. loans, the major source of foreign capital flows to the russian federation, are predominantly granted by european banks. in the third quarter of 2003, bis reporting banks from the eu accounted for almost 90 % of the russian federation ’ s outstanding bank debt. finally, there are signs that the euro is being used increasingly as an international currency. i firmly believe that we have just begun to discover and explore the mutual benefits of economic integration in terms of trade and investment flows. enlargement will lead to an acceleration of this process. the eu is committed to sharing the advantages of enlargement with its neighbours, as outlined in the commission ’ s communication on the recently published “ european neighbourhood policy ”. this applies first and foremost to the russian federation. the concept of a common european economic space is a clear indication of this. in this respect we welcome the bilateral agreement that has been reached with the eu on the accession of the russian federation to the wto. russia ’ s wto membership should certainly bring about benefits for world trade, but most of all it would benefit trade between two large economic neighbours : the russian federation and the eu. the bank of russia and the eurosystem against the background of these global and regional developments, the eurosystem and the bank of russia have significantly extended cooperation on central banking issues over the past few years. the most visible form of this is the eurosystem ’ s involvement in the eu tacis project with the bank of russia on banking supervision. its wider objective is to enhance the stability of the russian banking system through capacity - building at the bank of russia. since last november the ecb, nine national central banks of the euro area and three non - central bank supervisory authorities of eu member states have been jointly implementing an intensive and multifaceted project. i would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody involved for their efforts and open and constructive approach to meeting the challenges such a complex programme entails. with this seminar we want to strengthen and broaden our dialogue on all central banking issues, taking account of developments not only on a global and bilateral level, but also in our own economies. in this context, the russian federation ’ s rebound is - as a

formal account, equivalent to additional 22 million people onboarded [ to the formal financial system ]. this [ progress ] is impossible to imagine without e - money [ electronic money ]. i do not want to sound biased. so, i will say " gmaya, " okay? by the way, i tried it [ opening an e - wallet account ] myself. i got a prepaid card, but i actually made a mistake. i have my national id, but, by mistake, i uploaded my driver's 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches license. yet they were able to find out that i am the same person. of course, they also found out that i have another gcash account. by the way, i have a maya account as well. i am making sure [ that ] i am neutral. i noticed that the two [ e - wallet ] companies have very, very different strategies. one decided to be bank - neutral, bank - agnostic. the other one decided to have [ establish ] a digital bank. i was told that one is targeting the consumers ; the other is targeting merchants. this is the nice thing about competition, right? everyone will have his or her approach, and let us see who will succeed. but one possibility is that both can succeed because they ended up keeping a bit [ segment ] of the market. at any rate, we are very happy that because of these [ e - wallets ], there are many more account holders using transaction accounts for their payment accounts. then, more and more people are using pesonet instead of writing checks. but even there is a problem. sometimes, even in the bsp [ bangko sentral ng pilipinas ] when i am asking for reimbursement, they ask for a [ paper ] receipt. now, of course, what will happen even in that direction is : there will be efforts to make sure that the payment system will actually provide a kind of [ paperless ] service as it is happening, i think, in the case of egovpay. exploring parallel regulatory initiatives alongside the dptr : digital banks, open finance, regulatory sandbox, and project cbdc ph of course, we have other things to be happy about. [ we now have ] six digital banks. looking forward to the future, we also have the idea of an open finance framework. of course, the key to this is governance and privacy. this will feature an