By adopting the new banking law in the Republic of Albania and a range of other monetary policy and banking supervision-related decisions, we have aimed at firming up the macroeconomic balances further and strengthening financial stability. At the focus of the Bank of Albania’s strategy were the good governance and better risk management, improved banking activity transparency to the customer and the strengthening of internal control. This strategy peaked with a large-scale, exceptional and contemporary programme of open and constant communication with the public. I believe that the favourable liquidity and capital situation characterizing the Albanian banking system on the eve of the financial crisis last fall helped to cope with the withdrawal of deposits during September-October 2008. However, the Bank of Albania deemed as necessary the prudent monitoring of the situation and took a number of actions, which alleviated the pressures over the banking system substantially. These actions helped to relax the liquidity situation and they were in harmony with the ECB’s operational response to the crisis. First, an ad-hoc task force was set up. Its main responsibility was and remains the daily monitoring of each individual bank. Our direct conclusion was that the analysis should consider all micro-level aspects, each and every cell of the system and indicators. Second, a number of facilities were adopted for the incessant supply of the system with the required liquidity.
This situation may have considerable implications for the long-term economic growth rates in the regional countries, which still are in need for foreign financial funds to support their  BIS Review 118/2009  3  convergence process. Therefore, I believe that the crisis has called for another lesson: the need to draft and implement joint regional programmes and structural reforms to absorb projects and financing lines, which will in turn expand and deepen our joint Balkan market. It is true that after each crisis, macroeconomics as a science has made steps forward. Each crisis represents an event with specific characteristics, dissimilar or partly dissimilar from the previous crises. Each crisis brings in new information, regardless of the intensity, geographic extension or duration. Each crisis fills in a piece of the hard puzzle of free-market economy functioning, helping to a better understanding of the whole. I hope to provide a consensual conclusion if I say that we, the administrators, had the fortune to govern in a time of crisis and that we have a motive to feel privileged – and why not proud – to have coped with the challenge, being witnesses and active players in that regard. Thank you for your attention. 4  BIS Review 118/2009