in the world. however, this is a result of a lot of temporary factors base effect, temporary measures on electricity and a variety of other measures - which suggest that going forward inflation is gradually going to come back up again. overall, inflation should still reside within our target range for the year. hence, the broad contours of the economy are fairly encouraging. even with all the uncertainties out there, overall recovery in thailand has remained intact. on the global front, there are rising concerns about a slowdown in china, but concerns over a 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches slowdown or risk of a recession in the us seem to have gone down. so, there are positive economic surprises to counter negative ones. domestically, the big question is what is going to happen with the government. i believe some of the concerns over government spending may not be accurate. the bot's forecasts have already priced in a delay in government budget disbursement of about 3 - 6 months. the fact is that, with our budget, the fixed expenses still go out the door but what will not be spent is the discretionary investment budget, which is not huge in size. so, the impact on this year's headline gdp from any delay in fiscal spending is not large. the impact, if it comes, will come next year. overall, the picture is broadly intact in terms of economic recovery. this is positive news that we should take away. part 2 : policy responses - monetary and financial policies policy is a balancing act. we must try to manage the trade - offs properly and be flexible and agile in adjusting our policies in response to the economic circumstances that have changed. on monetary policy when we started our policy normalization process last year, the economy was recovering much more slowly than the region because it was highly dependent on tourism. our policy objective at that time was to ensure a smooth takeoff. we did not want to do anything to interrupt the recovery process. hence, our policy response was to undertake a'gradual and measured'interest rate normalization and we increased the policy rate from the low level of 0. 50 % by 25 bps each meeting1. this was different from what other central banks were doing, and we received a fair amount of criticism - aren't you in danger of being behind the curve? aren't you in danger of inflation not being transitory? no. we did not think so. we genuinely felt that the situation in thailand

and anonymity of cryptos make them vulnerable to illicit activities. regarding stablecoins, there are specific concerns. stablecoins are cryptos whose value is tied – or is at least claimed to be tied – to an outside asset, such as a regular currency or gold. stablecoins can bring innovations, especially for cross - border payments, like cheap remittances. but they also bring risks, in particular if they would be adopted as a generally accepted means of payment – risks, for instance, regarding the safety, efficiency and integrity of payments systems ; or regarding cyber security and operational resilience ; or regarding data and consumer protection. and a final big trend i would like to mention, is that, today, financial institutions are increasingly using big data and artificial intelligence as part of their fintech solutions. just think of a bank ’ s chatbot. using ai, this chatbot can tell customers what to do when they lose their bank card or help them with information about taking out a loan. in the field of fintech, north macedonia has made commendable progress. recent research on 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches the feasibility of implementing fintech in north macedonia, led by the national bank, concluded that the country would be ready for a fintech - led transformation in the financial services sector. 1 a lot, if not all, of these trends and technological innovations, are here to stay. and as central bankers and supervisors, we welcome any technological innovation that has the potential to make payments more convenient and accessible for everyone ; the potential to contribute to our societies ’ welfare ; the potential to contribute to a trustworthy and stable financial system. but – there is a big sine qua non. for us, as supervisors and central bankers, trust goes hand in hand with rules, regulation and supervision. on the one hand, we need to give room to promising technological innovations, but on the other hand we need to keep the risks in check. with too much leeway for risks people might lose trust in the financial system. so, if we look at what is going on today, how are we looking at tomorrow? for many of us, the digital era means a welcome step forward in payment options. today, for instance, we use our smartphones for much more than just calling and texting. mobile payment requests, contactless payments, and smartphone and smartwatch payments have become the order of the day. but it would be wrong to assume