Ardian Fullani: Recent economic and monetary developments in Albania Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the press conference on the Monetary Policy Decision of the Bank of Albania Supervisory Council, Tirana, 1 March 2012. *  *  *  Today, on 29 February 2012, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania reviewed and approved the monthly Monetary Policy Report. Based on the analyses of Albania’s latest economic and monetary developments and following discussions on their performance outlook, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania decided to keep the key interest rate unchanged at 4.50%. The Supervisory Council deemed that this decision provides the appropriate monetary conditions to meet the inflation target over the medium term. Moreover, it provides the necessary monetary stimulus to the economy in Albania. (Let me now proceed with an overview of economic developments and main issues that were discussed at today’s meeting). *** Annual inflation rate was 1.6% in January, slightly down by 0.1 percentage points compared with the previous month. The annual inflation rates have been pursuing a downward trend since the second half of 2011, reflecting the mitigation of inflationary pressures from the supply side: cancelling out of effects from administered price rise; increase of domestic agricultural production; and slowdown of imported inflation. The downward annual inflation in January reflected the further decrease of imported inflation from the external sector of the economy, materialised in the lower contribution of the prices of processed goods and foods.
Concrete applications have included the treatment of acute inflammation and the healing of wounds (An et al (2009)); the optimal rest periods necessary to enhance bone formation; spread. 10  and the distribution, or “hallmarking”, of cancer cells and their  11  In the field of disease control, some recent major work in epidemiology has only been achievable through the use of ABMs. For example, using geographical data, commuting patterns, age distributions and other census derived information, an ABM was recently used to simulate the spread of an influenza pandemic across all 57 million of Italy’s inhabitants (Degli et al. (2008)). This approach could, in principle, be tailored to other epidemics on a country-by-country basis. In the treatment of patients, ABMs have been used as a tool for scheduling in Emergency Departments. Using data on the weekly distribution of patient arrivals and the number of physicians available, ABMs have been used to determine which combinations of resources reduce the ‘door-to-doc’ time for patients. 10 11 12  12  See Ausk, Gross and Srinivasan (2006). For more, see Mansury et al. (2002). See Jones and Evans (2008). 17  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  17  Figure 10: Friesian Cattle  Figure 11: Bio-medical science  Source: Keith Weller/USDA (public domain). Holstein cow (image available here). Source: National Institutes of Health (public domain). Medical Laboratory Scientist (image available here).