completed. today instant interbank transfers can be executed within a matter of seconds 24 hours a day 7 days a week. the 28th of august 2018 marks one year since latvijas banka became the first euro area central bank to introduce the instant payments infrastructure based on sepa inst. scheme. this is an infrastructure for commercial banks and other payment service providers, which have the task of providing this service to their customers. the eurosystem will launch the target instant payment settlement ( tips ) service on the 30th of november 2018, enabling payment service providers to offer fund transfers in real time and around the clock, 365 days a year in secure central bank money. at the same time today ’ s conference is about much more than instant payments. today we would like to discuss the key trends shaping the industry and understand what the path forward is. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches the conditions for new developments are very favourable, especially in the payments market. on the one hand, consumers are increasingly looking for fast, convenient and affordable services that suit their changing habits. on the other hand, the advances in technology facilitate the creation of innovative solutions with the potential of causing fundamental digitalisation - led changes in the sector. it will result in a significant switch to contactless, mobile and instant payments solutions available around the clock in the near future. latest generations of smartphones offer several options to access payments applications using biometrical identity : fingerprint, eye screening and face recognition technologies. innovations such as distributed ledger technology, cloud computing and artificial intelligence will transform the marketplace over time. it is clear that in the future further improvements in payment services will not be about speed anymore. in a few years ’ time, when the completion of payment transactions within seconds will have become the new standard, for all practical purposes further improvements in speed are unlikely to be of importance. instant payments are now being implemented at pan - european level. it is equally clear that payments continue to migrate away from cash and become less visible to the customer as consumers shift purchases to online and mobile channels. while we are unlikely to move to a 100 % cashless society in the near future, the incompatibility between cash and digital marketplaces or digital platforms means that payments will continue to move towards cashless solutions. an overview of payment trends would be incomplete without mentioning crypto - assets, even though they remain controversial and are still being debated. the high volatility of crypto - asset value shows that they cannot be

ventspils port decreased, while the other ports of latvia performed well. vibrant economic activity allows us to project that gdp growth will be higher in the latter half of 2002 ( 5. 5 % - 5. 7 % ) than it was in the first half of the year ; and therefore, real gdp is expected to grow by 5 % in 2002. the year - on - year growth of 10. 0 % in latvia's exports that was observed in the first nine months of 2002 despite weak global economic growth should be noted as a positive development. in the country breakdown, exports grew in all groups, with most rapid growth reported in exports to the united states, sweden, russia and lithuania. exports to the principal trading partner, the european union, rose 6. 9 %. the principal contributors to the growth were exports of prepared foodstuffs, wood, furniture, machinery and mechanical appliances, electrical equipment, and base metals and articles of base metals. with domestic demand remaining high, imports were up by 12. 6 %. as latvia's exports rose more markedly, deficit in the balance of payments current account decreased substantially in july and august. in september, the current account deficit increased again, as imports of goods rose. in the first nine months of 2002, the services surplus was 12. 0 million lats higher than the year before. the increase in the services surplus resulted from rising exports of travel and other services and lower imports of other services. the transportation services surplus declined largely because of a low cargo turnover at the ventspils port. in the first nine months of 2002, the services surplus covered 40. 5 % of the goods deficit. the current account deficit continued to be adequately covered with foreign direct investment ( in the amount of 75. 5 % in the first nine months of 2002 ). if the external and internal economic environment does not deteriorate at the end of the year, the current account deficit for 2002 is likely to remain at 8. 5 % of gdp. the country's fiscal position was still better than the year before. in the first nine months of 2002, fiscal deficit in the general government consolidated budget was 19. 8 million lats ( 2. 2 times higher than the year before, when the deficit amounted to 43. 6 million lats ). the general government consolidated budget was affected by an increase in the local government consolidated budget fiscal deficit, which amounted to 20. 3 million lats. nevertheless, according to the preliminary data released by