senad softic, ph. d. governor of the central bank of bh sarajevo, 7 june 2020 appreciation speech at the 2019 person of the year award in the category of public administration organized by vec ernji list magazine f irst of all, i would like to thank you for your trust and honor for being nominated and selected for the prestigious person of the year award in this category. this is a great recognition for me personally, but also for the entire central bank of bosnia and herzegovina. that is why gratitude, of course, goes to everyone at the central bank. i would also like to express my special gratitude to my family for the support they have given me all this time. vecernjak's seal and awards for person of the year in various categories are prestigious awards and this happening of vecernji list has outgrown the borders of bh long ago and become a regional event. that is why it is a great honor to be just nominated, let alone to obtain such a recognition. our work has been recognized by international financial institutions and european union institutions, which have assessed the cbbh and its monetary policy as the foundation of macroeconomic stability in bh. two keywords characterize our business : improvement and stability. we continuously improve the work processes and competencies of all our resources, i. e. potentials. at the same time, we are trying to adapt, as much as possible, to the modern trends of central banking and the processes of the european union, in order to be fully compatible. on the other hand, we strive to preserve the core values that the central bank strives for, and that is stability. primarily the stability of our convertible mark, which enjoys the utmost trust of all bh citizens. we are facing times of economic uncertainty. and when the future is uncertain then the pillars of stability are more important than ever before. without strong foundations, there is no future construction. that is why i am convinced that the role of the central bank, as one of the foundations of not only economic, but also overall social stability, will be even greater in the future. we will continue to carry out our mandates, professionally and responsibly, and in the interest of all our citizens. thank you again, congratulations to all nominees and other winners in other categories with the following message : " only by joining forces, maintaining stability and believing in a better tomorrow we can, not only overcome this current crisis,

reads : why worry about things we cannot change? 5 of 7 4. role of foreign banks and the capital market. in bh, the capital market remains underdeveloped. the fact is that on the very small market, both entities created their own stock market infrastructure with separate stock exchanges. one in sarajevo ( sase ), and another in banja luka ( blse ). operations on them started more than 15 years ago. but, due to the usual factors in such cases i. e. small size of the markets, lack of privatization, and public mistrust in previous privatization programs, these resulted in very shallow market. unfortunately, as a result of the gfc, foreign investments are not growing. most probably, the political instability contributed to the fact that foreign investors shy away from bh. thus, commercial banks are the main financial intermediaries. most banks are foreign owned. our systemic stability is influenced by behavior of systemically important banks in bh. as most of them are foreign owned, we strongly support the vienna initiative, including vienna 2. 0 and maybe vienna 3. 0 in not so distant future. all the countries in our environment are small and for all of them foreign banks play a dominant role. npl remain high in bh, compared to other countries covered by vienna 2. 0. that is why we strive for even stronger cooperation among our countries. maybe this conference can communicate urbi et orbi the support for this? 5. about fintech and artificial intelligence : financial sector is heading toward significant changes, as digitalization is changing the landscape of the financial industry very rapidly. there is an abundance of literature on this topic, without a consensus view of the outcome for central banks. some play with the idea to issue their own digital currencies, the central bank digital currency ( cbdc ), like riksbank, the reserve bank of india, the people ’ s bank of china, etc. but harsh reality is that distributed ledger technologies ( dlt ) i. e. blockchain and numerous and various cryptocurrencies make not only main headlines of mass media, but 6 of 7 are increasing their share in the financial world. one cannot say what shall prevail in the future. our approach is that we want to be careful with our own regulation on those issues. we believe that the conservative approach to cryptocurrencies is optimal for us and we will continue closely to monitor the