achieve “ quality economic growth ” deserves attention, as it is vital for china to maintain sustainable growth, and will have significant implications for all of asia. it should be noted that these three changes are not mutually exclusive, but rather intertwined. the shift from “ factory asia ” ( as a manufacturing base ) to “ consumer asia ” ( as a consumption center ) is expected to change the nature of the supply chain, stimulate new demand in asia, and foster new industries. 3. realizing the asian century : how to avoid the middle income trap looking ahead 30 to 40 years, we may well expect asian economies to be even more prosperous. the asian development bank, where i was president until this spring, published a report titled asia 2050 : realizing the asian century in 2011. the report forecasts that bis central bankers ’ speeches asia ’ s gdp would comprise half of global gdp by 2050, which is about double the current share, on the condition that asian economies maintain their momentum. however, the rise of asia is by no means preordained. the path will not be easy and requires more than just doing more of the same. the report warns of another future if the region cannot tackle its daunting policy, institutional, and governance challenges in a timely manner. in this pessimistic scenario, the region could fall into a middle income trap and become stuck with low growth rates. the concept of the middle income trap originally pertained to resource - rich countries in latin america and africa that became middle - income economies by extracting and exporting their resources, but did not climb higher to become developed economies. asian economies have risen from being low - income to middle - income, not just by depending on natural resources, but by utilizing their human resources in the form of abundant labor to manufacture and export goods. but the question is whether high and sustainable economic growth can be maintained after passing the lewisian turning point, where surplus labor from the agricultural sector is absorbed into the industrial sector and upward pressure is exerted on industrial sector wages. there are only four asian economies, other than japan, that have joined the league of developed countries with per capita gross national income of more than 10, 000 usd since world war ii : south korea, taiwan, hong kong, and singapore, often dubbed the four asian tigers. this shows how much more difficult it is for a middle - income economy to become a developed economy than for a low - income economy to become a middle - income economy.

nina stoyanova : the future of money speech by ms nina stoyanova, deputy governor and head of the banking department of the bulgarian national bank, at the manager magazine fourth banking and finance forum “ the future of money ”, sofia, 20 october 2021. * * * thank you for inviting me to open today ’ s fourth banking and finance forum on the topic ofthe future of money. new technologies are changing the financial sector today and leading to the offering of increasingly diverse and convenient payment products in a highly competitive environment. the policies of the european commission, the european central bank and national regulators are aimed at catalysing this process, to exploit more fully the potential offered by technology and to achieve cheaper, safer and more accessible payment solutions. the dynamics of the processes in europe is also fully valid for our country. data on payments processed by payment systems in our country show a significant growth. for the first six months of 2021, the value of payments made through the bnb - operated real - time gross settlement system in bgn ( rings ) increased by 30 % compared to the first half of 2020, while for the same period the value of payments in euro through the national component system of the large - value payment system in euro – target2 - bnb increased by 65. 7 %. i would like to touch briefly on some of the recent technological developments in the field of payment services in the european union and in our country. security of payments the rapid development of e - commerce in recent years and the increased use of electronic channels to initiate payments pose new challenges related to ensuring the security and customers ’ data. as of september 2019, it has become mandatory in europe to implement strong customer authentication. this means that when an electronic payment is initiated, at least two independent elements from different categories – knowledge, possession and inherence – must be used in the process. in the case of remote payment transactions, e. g. via internet, an additional requirement is introduced to perform so - called dynamic linking – linking the code for each transaction to a specific amount and a specific payee. these requirements are implemented by the payment service providers in our country. for the practical implementation of these regulatory requirements, new technologies are again coming to the rescue. recently, biometric authentication has shown great potential by providing verification of elements characterising the user : fingerprint, iris scanning, facial recognition, etc. many payment service providers in bulgaria have already introduced similar customer identification methods using mobile banking applications. apart