hamad al - sayari : the “ banker ” program in saudi arabia speech by his excellency hamad al - sayari, governor of the saudi arabian monetary agency, in the inauguration ceremony of the " banker " program, at the institute of banking, riyadh, 28 november 2006. * * * dear brothers, i am pleased to welcome you all on this occasion in which we celebrate reaping another fruit of the joint cooperation between the saudi arabian monetary agency and the banks operating in the kingdom, namely, the " banker " program. i would like to take this opportunity to thank all the participating banks and the institute of banking for their support and efforts for organizing and executing this ambitious program which aims at meeting the growing needs of the banking sector and qualifying job - seekers of the saudi youth. as you know, the banking sector has witnessed over the past few years accelerated developments due to the economic growth seen by the kingdom of saudi arabia. these developments have posed a great challenge to the banks and financial institutions as they had to expedite the provision and diversification of financial services to meet the increasing needs of the domestic market. the development of financial institutions must, undoubtedly, be paralleled with development in human resources. this, in turn, requires plans for training and qualifying cadres to enable financial institutions to undertake their important role in serving the national economy. since its inception, sama has supported banks to develop human resources by establishing the institute of banking, which contributes to training and qualifying a large number of national cadres in the financial services sector. the institute continues to professionally exercise this role and make efforts to cope with the developments in the financial and banking sector by providing information solutions and diverse educational programs consistent with individual bank needs. the institute's programs have covered important banking fields, such as treasury, investment and credit, and contributed effectively to developing and qualifying national cadres. thus, saudization in the banking sector exceeded 85 percent by the end of the first half of 2006. dear audience, these developments, which have diversified and expanded the services provided in the saudi market, have given rise to substantial challenges to financial institutions. one of the most important challenges is to provide a sufficient number of qualified human resources to meet the needs of these institutions. despite the employment efforts made by banks to cope with this expansion, and though 4, 246 employees were appointed during the first half of 2006, the total needs of these institutions are still not satisfied. hence, sama has promptly

policymakers, we should ask ourselves whether the decision - making frameworks we ’ ve used in the past are the ones that will help us grow our economic capital in the most effective way for the future. i ’ m persuaded that some change is necessary. the long - term challenges we are facing – and not just in ireland but across the european union ( eu ) and beyond – require long - term thinking about the growth and resilience of our economic capital. and the nature of those challenges also requires more integrated and multi - disciplinary thinking. none of the individual stocks of capital exist in in a vacuum. to meet these structural challenges, policy frameworks need to invest in developing an integrated analytical framework that brings together different disciplines, maintaining their individual strengths but also leveraging their synergies. for example, as diane coyle wrote recently, “ one of the lessons from the pandemic must be the high cost of not having better integrated social, medical and natural science research. there has been great work across disciplines, on the hoof – it should have been in place to start with. if we don ’ t fix this now, how on earth are climate change, biodiversity loss, demographic pressures and other big challenges 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches going to be tackled? ”. i agree with her. we need a framework that helps us to look at the bigger picture. or, to put it in more familiar terms for some of us, our macroeconomic framework needs a greater intergenerational focus. we need to be thinking broadly and over longer time horizons to fully capture the trade - offs we face, not least because many of these structural challenges also require a global policy response. policies to address climate change, for example, may appear costly in a short time horizon, but deliver large net benefits in a longer horizon that makes clear the benefits of avoiding catastrophic increases in global temperatures. the european context in ireland, much of our macroeconomic framework is embedded into that of the eu and the euro area. as members of the eu and its common currency, we share an institutional architecture to manage the deep integration between our economies ( including the european central bank ( ecb ), european commission, european parliament and european council ). an important part of that architecture are sets of rules which govern how we work, some of them in regulations and others in the treaty on the functioning of the european union ( such as the ecb ’ s monetary policy role and the stability and growth pact