payments. while these are indeed noteworthy developments, we know that the work is far from finished. beyond account ownership, financial inclusion entails the availability of a range of products that meet the diverse needs of the population, particularly the minorities and the vulnerable sectors. to create a truly inclusive financial system, we need to ensure that the needs of the muslim filipinos who are excluded due to religious reasons are being addressed. a world bank study showed that approximately 9 % of the population exclude themselves from the formal financial system due to religious reasons in muslim majority countries. this is where islamic banking and finance comes in. islamic finance can deepen financial inclusion not only because it delivers shari - ah - compliant products for the muslim communities but also because its very essence is based on the principles of social justice and equality. islamic finance products are specifically created to support the needs and protect the rights of the poor and underserved. islamic finance and financial inclusion, therefore, share a common end - goal. as you may know, in islamic finance, products such as sadaqah, waqf, and qard are called social solidarity instruments because they are designed to uplift the plight of the less privileged through the wealth of those who have more in life. as the name suggests, social solidarity instruments provide wealthy individuals and businesses a channel through which they can financially support the poor in the community. other shari ’ ah compliant products can also support not only individuals but also small business owners such as sale - based contracts ( i. e. murabahah, salam etc. ), lease - based contracts ( i. e. ijarah ) or guarantee contracts ( i. e. kafalah ). providing the appropriate products and services to the small and medium enterprises is key to broad - based growth. islamic finance can also help the country attract funds from islamic investors looking for opportunities to support infrastructure requirements particularly in the bangsamoro. poverty alleviation efforts have necessitated development of critical rural infrastructure that can support 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches the quality of life and the livelihood of the rural folk. simply put, we cannot afford to overlook the role of islamic finance in promoting social equity, not when there are still predominantly muslim provinces — like the bangsamoro that have poverty incidences as high as 68 %. in fact, in the 2018 bangsamoro organic law, the bangsamoro government, the bsp, department of finance and the national commission on muslim filipinos are

29th ( ec ) 2 conference on “ big data econometrics with applications ” opening remarks by salvatore rossi senior deputy governor of the bank of italy and president of the institute for the supervision of insurance ( ivass ) rome, 13 december 2018 it is my great pleasure to open this conference and to welcome all the speakers and participants. i thank the organizers for designing such a broad and topical programme. with the increasing digitalization of the economy, data has become central in all the social sciences, and economics is no exception. in fact, some have talked about data being the new oil of today ’ s world. econometrics and statistics are therefore becoming increasingly dependent on the availability of huge and heterogeneous datasets. only few years ago, the econometric profession was rather cautious about big data. classical econometrics is based on theory and so relies on approaches that differ significantly from those of big data analytics. econometricians have been taught for decades to start with a theory and then use data to prove or disprove it. big data and machine learning work in the opposite way : they allow one to look for patterns simply by processing huge amounts of data, regardless of possible underlying models. it ’ s important to note that most econometricians have expressed concern about the reliability and representativeness of such vast datasets. however, it ’ s becoming evident that big data could disrupt traditional econometrics. data collection from social media has produced unprecedentedly large and complex, though unstructured, datasets on economic agents ’ behaviour and interactions, and these are proving to be a goldmine of economic information. we have been working with data analysis for many years, but it is now time to adapt our computational approaches to the new context. the bank of italy, because of its multiple functions, follows the evolution of big data very attentively. we will discuss this topic in a workshop organized with the bank of international settlements next 15 january here in rome. in the last few years we have progressed along our learning curve. we have combined skills in economics, econometrics, statistics and computer science to deal with the increasing volume, variety and velocity of data, which we have then used to estimate unemployment and inflation, to improve our economic forecasts, and to measure consumer and business sentiment. we, like all central banks, must also be ready to cope with the increasing public demand for access to granular data. as a