crisis stressed the need to “ reshape ” economic data as well, as it came under higher public scrutiny as well. it means they are watched and used actively by policy - makers, financial markets and general public. the example of the excessive deficit procedure mechanism and the european commission macro imbalance procedure, used to detect and correct macroeconomic imbalances on the basis of a scoreboard of indicators “ are adding pressure on statisticians to deliver high quality data ” ( gonzales - paramo, 2012 ). this highlights the need and the importance of having excellent cooperation between central banks and national statistical offices. at the end, i hope i have managed to pinpoint the main aspects of the ongoing and evolving discussion on the main challenges for the statistics on the backdrop of the “ great recession ”. the crisis was hopefully once in a century adverse event, which made a revolution in the manner in which the statistics is thought of. many issues and challenges in statistics which arose after the crisis have been tackled in the advanced world, but still there are many remaining challenges which are to be tackled in the times to come. as for the less developed countries and less developed statistical systems, the challenges are twofold. first, even absent the crisis, there was a lot of work to be done in order to converge to the systems and practices of the developed world. of course, lots have been done and gaps have been narrowed. but the changes in the approach to the statistics in the developed economies after the crisis mean that their systems will gain additional layer of quality. hence, the crisis has made the challenges for us even bigger, as the benchmarks for convergences in the area of statistics are much higher. but i am positive that the efforts and the energy that we invest in this will be enough to get us closer to what is currently being perceived as the best practice in the world of statistics. in fact there is no other alternative. by now we all know that the reliance on second - best solutions in statistics might entail wrong policy decisions, inability to detect and respond to vulnerabilities, and large costs for the society. let me wish you a successful seminar with productive and interactive discussions. thank you. bis central bankers ’ speeches

dimitar bogov : policy nexus and the global environment – a new consensus emerging from the crisis? address by mr dimitar bogov, governor of the national bank of the republic of macedonia, at the 2nd research conference “ policy nexus and the global environment – a new consensus emerging from the crisis? ”, skopje, 26 april 2013. * * * ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, let me wish you welcome on our second research conference that we usually organize on the day of the monetary independence anniversary of the republic of macedonia. the subject of this year ’ s conference we believe is highly topical, in line with the ongoing lively discussions among central bankers, research and academic institutions worldwide. the global economy in the last couple of years undergone remarkable changes, both from institutional and policy design setup. we witnessed financial market turbulences, banks failures and sovereign debt crisis with strong contagion around the world economy that was almost unique by its size, and the global economy is still struggling to recover. after five years of global crisis we could say that we experienced a lot, and hopefully, we learnt a lot. one of the main lessons of the crisis was exactly related to the topic of the conference – the need of policy nexus as a kind of a consensus emerging from the crisis. what is the policy nexus about? at the initial stage of the financial crisis the importance of the macro prudential policies in the overall policy mix was highlighted and therefore, a lot of attention has been put on the monetary and macro prudential policy nexus, conveying the main message that the price stability and financial stability are interconnected. with the appearance of the sovereign debt and banking crisis in the last couple of years in the euro area, it was quite obvious that the poor public finances management could also impose threats to the financial system. the financial instability and weak public finances can potentially have adverse effects on the financial markets, imposing distortions in the monetary policy transmission mechanism, and resulting in serious macroeconomic imbalances. the required policy nexus is becoming a necessary precondition for designing and implementing a sound macroeconomic management. under situation that was more specific than usual, when the role of traditional instruments was limited, the monetary policy turned to unconventional policy measures. although the monetary policy in the region has not been constrained by zero lower bound on interest rates, the central banks also turned towards unconventional monetary policy tools, having in mind the potential risks of repeated deterioration of the external imbalances and inflationary pressures or