, my main concern is not whether private individuals will manage to repay their loans or not. the real question here is what will happen to enterprises. with the government itself paying a margin of 3 - 4 %, which source of finance can enterprises rely on? and if the entire economy can only borrow at double - digit interest rates, and even such borrowing is in short supply, how will this reflect on the country ’ s economic growth? at this point, we may safely conclude that the measures taken by the us and eu governments and their respective central banks have so far produced no results, that money has not been costlier for over a decade, that the key policy rates of central banks and the market price of money ( euribor ) are still moving in the opposite directions, that excess money pumped into the banking system by the ecb is returned in the form of deposits rather than lending, while trust among financial agents has troughed and the economy is already heading for recession! 2. it is practically impossible to foresee the future course of the crisis. earlier taboos, such as the valuation of balance - sheet categories, are being broken overnight, the governments are nationalizing the banking sector in order to “ strengthen the market mechanism ”, stock exchanges are even rewarding such moves and there is no end to government plans! learning from history, the governments have clearly decided that it is better to overreact than underreact, but, unfortunately, with little success so far! the future course of events will largely hinge on : • how far will the government go in acquiring ownership of the banking sector and when and how will it pull out – if, indeed, it wants to? • to what extent can central banks replace the financial sector as lenders and should they do so? • what will happen if governments are really faced with the obligation to pay out a major portion of the promised funds, which could well lead to bankruptcy as in the case of iceland? the situation is already unravelling, and a number of countries – primarily ukraine, hungary and kazakhstan – are mooted as potential “ victims ”! why these countries? the answer is fairly simple : a ) high level of debts maturing in the next year – question of possibility and cost of refinancing, b ) high share of foreign currency clause indexed loans, with savings mostly in the domestic currency – at times of exchange rate turbulences, c ) heavy dependence on inflow of foreign capital ( foreign direct

##ly, more than two years ago, the national bank of serbia developed a national instant payments system : our nbs ips. since october 2018, our citizens and corporates can use a modern payment system, available to them at all times, 24 hours a day, with the option of executing a money transfer in one second. our nbs ips is one of the first instant payment systems in the world – it was introduced a month before the ecb launched its system. the option to pay bills of any major service provider within seconds – simply by scanning the nbs ips qr code – is another thing that makes serbia unique in this part of europe. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches here in serbia, we worked hard on a law governing the issuance, secondary trading and provision of services related to digital commerce. platforms for trading in virtual currencies and their exchange for money will come to life in serbia, but security will remain our priority. providers of these services will be carefully licensed and supervised equally so. while developing services, we don ’ t let our guard down for a moment when it comes to the security of our payment infrastructure. all of the most successful countries have their national cards, because not using expensive international brands allows them to make savings and to ensure the independence of their own payment infrastructure. this is another field where serbia stands out, because we have our serbian dina card. we named it dina symbolically – after our national currency, the dinar, whose relative stability is the backbone of the overall macroeconomic stability in serbia. a nation has its language, and a national financial system has its national payment card – therefore, it is our obligation to choose who to cooperate with on making it stronger. we have chosen the largest card system in the world – china unionpay. personally, i had the privilege to agree on the details of our cooperation and sign the agreement on cooperation, as the crown of our efforts. the unionpay card is already accepted at atms in serbia, and our goal is to ensure that it is accepted in the entire acceptance network of our national card system. we have also agreed with china unionpay to issue our joint serbianchinese dinacard – unionpay payment card. esteemed colleagues, consumer habits are increasingly changing. it is up to us to keep up with these changes, as well as to encourage them. today, financial service consumers in serbia are among the first in europe to be able to conclude