last few years, kenyans have expressed concerns on what they perceived as the alienation of banks from meeting their needs. today ’ s event and launch is proof that banks have heard the cry of kenyans. over the last three years, banks have reviewed their business models to put the customer at the center. msme ’ s have not been left behind and the variety of products targeting this sector and exhibited here today is welcome. today is really just the beginning for banks in scaling up support to msmes. a lot more remains to be done, not just through finance but also through capacity building, enabling access to markets, promoting innovation and most importantly through creating an enabling business environment. feedback from msmes will also be essential for banks to calibrate their products. by effectively serving the msme sector, banks will truly be working for and with kenyans. with the advances in technology and innovations, this is the vision that the banking sector must achieve. thank you!

%, 0. 7 percentage points higher than the december final estimate. but most of the increase in headline inflation has come from energy prices ; core inflation in the flash estimate remained subdued at 0. 9 %, the same as in december. as i discussed earlier, monetary policymakers 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches have to look through the first - round, direct impact of energy prices on headline inflation, and instead focus on the second - round effects on inflation expectations. as a result, we will treat the current increase in energy prices in a symmetrical fashion to how we treated the fall in 2013. short - term inflation expectations have also increased in recent months, but still remain below our objective, while long - run expectations remain firmly anchored. based on this, the governing council continues to expect interest rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases. outlook for monetary policy indeed, the governing council has said for a long time that appropriate stimulus will remain in place until inflation has converged sustainably towards our objective of below, but close to, 2 %. what do we mean by sustainably? well, it relates to our objective and how we have always carried out our mandate. let me highlight the four criteria that the president set out at the january press conference. inflation needs to converge towards our objective over the medium term. as mentioned earlier, the relevant horizon for monetary policy is the medium term. we do not react to short - term fluctuations, particularly those caused by energy and other commodity prices. the convergence towards our objective needs to be durable – one swallow does not a summer make. we need to see clear evidence that once inflation returns to our objective, it will remain there. the third criterion is that inflation needs to be self - sustaining. we have witnessed an increasingly resilient recovery in economic activity, but this has not as yet translated into a resilient increase in inflation. inflation in the euro area is still reliant on the substantial amount of monetary stimulus provided by the ecb, and it would be inappropriate to withdraw the stimulus while that reliance remains. finally, the ecb ’ s mandate covers the whole euro area, and our policy reflects that. what matters to us is the euro area - wide measure of inflation, not the outturns for individual countries. conclusion in conclusion, monetary policy is currently set appropriately to ensure a return to our inflation objective in the medium term. recovery