12 months through may and still down about 25 percent through july. retail employment fell 15 percent over march and april, though it has recovered substantially since then, and in july it was 6 percent below the pre - covid level. it is encouraging to see that even those sectors most heavily affected by the crisis are finding ways to innovate. stores are adjusting hours and ramping up delivery, restaurants are changing menus and creating outdoor space, distilleries shifted from making bourbon to hand sanitizers, and independent businesses that hadn ’ t previously relied heavily on technology are now using it to stay connected to customers and regulate workflow. timely and supportive fiscal and monetary policy measures also have helped, but with the progress of the recovery still tentative, i expect that many businesses will continue to fight for survival in the months ahead, with the support of their lenders and communities. looking ahead, the economic outlook will continue to evolve quickly. we experienced a pronounced and very welcome bounceback in national retail spending and housing activity over the early summer months. we also saw positive news on progress toward a vaccine and in the effective treatment of patients. even so, positive cases and hospitalizations have risen in some areas and continue to weigh on some regions and the overall economy. as chair powell has noted, the timeline for the recovery is highly uncertain and will depend heavily on the course of the pandemic. we must therefore recognize that progress toward a full recovery in economic activity may well be slow and uneven the fed ’ s response to the pandemic now let me turn to the federal reserve ’ s role in the government ’ s response to the pandemic. during the initial phase of the crisis, we took a number of actions to stabilize financial markets that came under intense stress, including purchasing sizable amounts of treasury and mortgage - backed securities. to support households and businesses, the fed quickly lowered our target for the federal funds rate, which has helped to lower borrowing costs but created a different challenge for financial institutions — depressed net interest margins. the fed has also supported actions by congress and the administration by creating a number of new emergency lending programs. these programs were designed to restore and sustain proper functioning in certain financial markets that had seized up in march and to facilitate the continued flow of credit from banks to households and businesses. one federal stimulus program that relied heavily on the participation and expertise of community bankers is the paycheck protection program ( ppp ). working through banks, the ppp program 2

, frequency, and granularity of data, we are prompted to implement regulatory technology ( regtech ) and supervisory technology ( suptech ) in our financial sector supervision to increase our effectiveness and efficiency. in our aim to preserve and foster the reputation of curacao as a sound, transparent, attractive, and reputable international financial center, we strive to achieve institutional agility and adaptability to guide our financial sector into this new, technology - driven, era. research has shown that over 85 % of global fintech ’ s are directed toward or related to the financial services business. this suggests that the financial services industry, especially the international banking sector, will most likely be considerably disrupted in the upcoming years. considering that innovation and new financial technologies transcend borders and markets in which international banks operate, we should take charge in shaping the future of regional and global financial services provision. ladies and gentlemen, it is imperative that i underscore that the cbcs is committed to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, and will continue to provide guidance for the financial sector to combat these abusive and illicit practices within our jurisdiction. the cbcs is currently updating the aml / cft provisions & guidelines ( p & g ). in addition, the cbcs, the financial intelligence unit curacao ( fiu ), and the gaming control board ( gcb ) have agreed to meet on a quarterly basis to provide a platform to monitor trends, local threats and vulnerabilities, and new developments in the area of aml / cft. in 2022 our jurisdiction will be subject to the fourth round mutual evaluation by cfatf. a vital part in the preparation for this mutual evaluation is the national risk assessment ( nra ) to identify, analyze, understand, and address aml / tf risks in curacao. the nra is on track to be completed by the end of 2019 which provides our jurisdiction sufficient time to be duly prepared for the next cfatf evaluation. allow me to close with the following statement : “ it is always better to be compliant than be sorry ”. i thank you for your attention and wish you a fruitful seminar.