. this is a child & youth finance international ( cyfi ) initiative, with the support of the organisation for economic co - operation and development ( oecd ), and over 53 thousand institutions and organisations and over 32 million children and young people participate in this year ’ s edition. the slogan for this year is ‘ learn. save. earn. ’ around this slogan, partner institutions organise awareness - raising and educational activities. as active participants in the money week activities, we have chosen to focus on educating the young people and encouraging them not to use the 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches outdated terms “ new lek ” – “ old lek ” in our day - to - day financial interactions. our slogan for this year is “ too young to speak in old lek ” this is the overarching theme for most of our contest categories. i take this opportunity to thank, on behalf of the bank of albania, all the participants and i exhort them to be an active part in the efforts for eliminating such outdated terminology. the bank of albania, with long - standing support from the albanian association of banks, and the precious support from the ministry of education, sports and youth, will organise a series of awareness - raising activities for children and young people on such topics. thus, during the week, a number of activities will be organised such as lectures, contests, visits to commercial banks and the museum of the bank of albania, aimed at involving as many students as possible. in all educational activities of the bank of albania, including these contests, we appreciate and encourage inspiration, originality and proactive thinking. the submitted projects for all the categories, whose winners are present today, feature all these elements. i take this opportunity to personally congratulate all of them for their qualitative works presented during the submission phase. their work and engagement are a source of constant inspiration for the bank of albania to introduce increasingly ambitious projects. the projects category targeted sixth graders, the photomontage category targeted ninth graders and the videos category targeted high - school students. the participation rate was very high, with around 340 students from 40 schools. i would like to extend my special thanks to the teachers and professors, whose commitment and passion is a key and necessary element for the realisation of these educational projects. lastly, i would like to thank you all for the insofar commitment, and invite all the participating institutions to continue the cooperation in the future, with a view to advancing our financial

other commodity prices rose in the years before the 2014 oil price shock, so did our dollar, making our non - commodity exports to the united states less competitive and reinforcing the ongoing shift from manufacturing to services. as i mentioned earlier, this is likely reducing the level of investment. now, let ’ s look at the structural factors that affected business investment during this period. i ’ ll focus on two : demographics and productivity growth. population aging under way across most advanced economies has led to a marked slowdown in labour force growth, and this has been a strong headwind to investment. in canada and the united states, for example, the annual growth rate of the labour force slowed from around 1 1 / 4 per cent in 2006 to less than 1 / 2 per cent in 2016. 11 this decline has reduced potential output growth and investment demand. low productivity growth since 2007 has also been a headwind on business investment. however, while demographic shifts are fairly predictable, it is less clear how much of the decline in productivity growth reflects a structural change and how much is a cyclical response to the subdued recovery. for example, the loss of existing firms and the low creation rate of new firms during and after the great recession have not only directly reduced investment but also impaired the dynamism of the private sector, causing persistent, adverse effects on productivity growth. 12 5 / 9 bis central bankers'speeches all of these challenges have increased uncertainty about the strength of future demand and weighed on business confidence. as a result, canadian firms have acted cautiously in their investment decisions, despite operating close to capacity in some industries. in some cases, they have met any increases in demand by hiring more labour. so that ’ s how we got to where we are. let me now take you through our most recent economic outlook for canada. the outlook for the economy and investment let me start by making two important points from our january monetary policy report and march 1st policy rate announcement. first, our outlook since mid - 2016 for gradually increasing global growth is largely consistent with what we have seen in the data. second, heightened concerns about prospective protectionist measures mean that we should not presume that the economic disappointments we have experienced since the great recession are over. that said, the adjustment to the decline in commodity prices is progressing, and activity in resource - related industries appears to have bottomed out. real gdp growth is expected to pick up from 1. 4 per cent in 2016 to slightly above 2. 0 per