I would like to assure you that depending on the nature of the recommendations, some will be implemented in a short period of time, while others will take more time and additional technical and human resources, and of course, further technical assistance in terms of experience and knowledge of the ECB and the national central banks of the EU. It is the creation of opportunities for further cooperation that I consider the second important benefit for the National Bank from the implementation of this project. Namely, the project involved a number of experts from various areas of central banking from the ECB and from 11 central banks of the European System of Central Banks. In the past nine months they had intensive communication and cooperation with their counterparts in the NBRM and conducted a total of 16 assessment missions within which they unselfishly transferred their whole experience and knowledge. The implementation of the project, further contributed to increasing the awareness and knowledge of the NBRM staff in the relevant EU regulations, standards and practices applied by modern central banks. Hence, I would especially like to emphasize the future prospects of our mutual cooperation that will hopefully continue in the same spirit and will further deepen. Finally, let me once again emphasize my satisfaction and give the credit for the successful implementation of the project, to the resident programme coordinator from the ECB, and to all participating experts from the ECB, the European System of Central Banks and the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia.
Conclusions Summing up, our results imply that there might be considerable cost savings to be made by the banks through a more transparent and cost-based pricing This is because such a pricing strategy would lead to changes in the pattern of demand. Consumers would have economic incentives to shift to those instruments that are less costly to produce. According to our cost estimates, they would use debit cards more and credit cards and cash less and they would increase their use of electronic credit transfers and direct debits at the cost of paper-based credit transfers. A more cost-based price strategy would result in private customers facing transaction fees on paperbased and electronically-initiated credit transfers and in the introduction of transaction fees for cash withdrawals. Fees for acquiring services would have to decrease. The fact that Swedish banks do not take any fees whatsoever for cash withdrawals, while such fees can be observed in the other Nordic countries, may very well be the explanation for our greater use of cash and lesser use of card payments. Based on the data on variable costs and volumes, the banking sector could lower their variable costs by around 560 million Swedish kronor annually if bank customers replaced charge and credit cards and cash with debit card payments. The shift from paper-based to electronically-initiated credit transfers could result in a further reduction in the banking sector’s variable costs of almost 200 million Swedish kronor annually. One interesting issue to consider is the reason for this pricing strategy.