At the same time, they often try to absorb the rise in wage costs and keep their prices unchanged mainly through labor-saving and efficiency-improving investment that makes use of information technology. In fact, software investment plans of small firms for fiscal 2017 have marked a significant increase of more than 20 percent on a year-on-year basis (Chart 8).
* * * I would first like to thank the European Parliament and the Parliament of Romania for this opportunity to reflect together on the first 20 years of the euro and discuss the road ahead.