. mobile phones are here to stay. • cards will develop technically. they will become safer with chips instead of magnetic strips and they will have several different functions – identity cards, driving licences, passports? technology appears to have no limits here. the opportunities with wireless communication further expand the areas of use. • use of e - money will grow. not cash cards, where there are good substitutes, but the server - based network money. as e - trading increases so too does the need for secure e - payments. • finally, i believe that paper - based payments will die a natural death, just as cheques once did. they are expensive for the banks and impractical for consumers. in a few years we will see them on display at the national museum of science and technology. thank you! “ electronic money from a central bank perspective ”, speech by stefan ingves, sveriges riksbank, 4 march 1998.

anita angelovska bezhoska : increased availability and use of official statistics in the republic of north macedonia introduction speech by ms anita angelovska bezhoska, governor of the national bank of the republic of north macedonia, at the marking of the european statistics day, skopje, 19 october 2021. * * * your excellency ms. forsgren bengtsson, dear mr. simovski and mr. stymne, dear state secretary ms gaber, distinguished speakers, representatives of the non - government sector, colleagues and participantsfor a second year in a row, we are marking the european statistics day in specific circumstances, shaped by the global pandemics. the health crisis has infiltrated itself into every single pore of our societies disrupting the world we know. statistics has not been an exception whatsoever. at the time the crisis hit, statistics area in global terms was already facing many challenges. producers of statistics were coping with lingering tasks that came as a side effect of the global financial crisis in 2008. although the lack of statistics was not a cause of this crisis, still it revealed significant data gaps and underlined a need of more frequent, comprehensive and granular data to strengthen policy - making infrastructure. the second challenge rested in unprecedented digitalisation and data proliferation, by both private and public entities. it challenged official statistical producers, which serve as the primary source of data, to innovate their data and data sources, but even more to work intensively on setting proper data governance frameworks. also, one of the lessons from the crisis was the need for higher financial literacy and awareness of financial risks, which among other things, required better tailored communication of statistics to different interest groups in society. thus, in fact pandemics occurred in the midstream of our strivings to address the flaws in statistics revealed during the gfc. at the very beginning of the crisis, the official statistical process was threatened by a basic risk of disruption, so preserving continuity of statistics production was vital. last year the world bank conveyed a survey among national statistical offices to assess the initial impact of the health crisis on their functionality1. the key findings can be pinned down to several conclusions : 1 ) around 65 % of the offices were fully or partially closed, and face to face data collection was stopped ; 2 ) the ability to collect essential statistics and to meet international data reporting requirements was impacted, particularly in low income countries ; 3 ) approximately two out of three