to adopt a number of necessary risk oversight practices that would ultimately benefit the banks and their stakeholders. what needs to be stressed is that reputation is a key asset of malta ’ s financial system which cannot be taken for granted. efforts to safeguard financial sector reputation need to be ongoing and undertaken by all concerned in the financial sector. reforms in the banking system need to be accompanied by structural reforms in other parts of the economy. however, this can only be possible if the economy is growing sustainably. within the context of limited fiscal space, there is a need for the appropriate environment to encourage investment and stimulate growth in the private sector. going forward, we need to enhance malta ’ s competitive position in order to attract a higher volume of capital investment in the future. a strong education and skills base, an upgraded infrastructure and a clean and sustainable source of energy are essential elements that would pave the way for future investment. the financial sector provides an important contribution to output and employment growth in malta. going forward, the sector also has room for expansion in a range of activities that link it with the domestic economy in the sense that value is added in malta by engaging the services of financial experts, lawyers, accountants and so on, but catering to demand abroad, such as in the mediterranean region and beyond. for example, the recently announced initiative to create space for a new commercial activity in the form of facilities for islamic banking is consistent with this vision for malta. enhancing our competiveness requires a constant search for new areas of activity as well as strengthening and refining the currently successful ones. it is the only way that we can ensure that the standard of living can keep increasing and that the value added of the maltese economy can keep advancing. thank you. bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches bis central bankers ’ speeches

guy debelle : twenty - five years of inflation targeting in australia address by mr guy debelle, deputy governor of the reserve bank of australia, at the rba conference 2018, sydney, 12 april 2018. * * * this draws on a number of pieces i have written on inflation targeting over the past two decades, both at the rba and the imf. thanks to claudia seibold for her assistance with the data. introduction it has been 25 years since australia adopted an inflation - targeting regime as the framework for monetary policy. at the time of adoption, inflation targeting was in its infancy. new zealand had announced its inflation target in 1989, followed by canada and sweden. the inflation - targeting framework was untested and there was little in the way of academic analysis to provide guidance about the general design and operational principles. practice was very much ahead of theory. now 25 years later, inflation targeting is widely used as the framework for monetary policy. while there are differences in some of the features across countries, the similarities are more pervasive than the differences. and generally, the features of inflation - targeting frameworks have tended to converge over time. it is interesting to firstly examine how the inflation - targeting framework in australia has evolved over the 25 years. secondly, it is also timely to reassess the appropriateness of the regime. the first is the main task of my paper, the second is the task of the conference collectively. in terms of the first, the main point i will make is that the australian framework has not changed much over the past 25 years. the flexible nature of the framework, which was there at its inception, has proven to be resilient to the quite substantial changes in the macroeconomic environment that have taken place since. this is in contrast to some other countries that have moved from an initially rigid definition ( which may well have been appropriate at their inception ) toward something more flexible. the framework in australia was adaptable from the start, which caused some issues in convincing some people of the seriousness with which the reserve bank was adopting an appropriate monetary framework. while the specification of the regime has not materially changed, one thing that has changed is the degree of confidence that the regime might actually work. australia, like other countries, came to inflation targeting after trying a number of alternative approaches to monetary policy. these approaches had not delivered either the desired price stability nor acceptable macroeconomic outcomes. inflation targeting was the next attempt to try and better achieve these outcomes