In relation to this, the association should leverage on its nationwide network to increase awareness among the public of their responsibility to deal only with authorised money services. Part of this should also include explaining the relevant regulatory requirements to the public, such as the need to produce identification documents for large transactions. Over the last 4 months, I am encouraged by the numerous initiatives undertaken by the Association and the fruitful engagements and consultations with the Bank. I understand that the Association has embarked on a series of nationwide training to help its members implement effective corporate governance practices, develop internal policies and procedures and put in place AML/CFT compliance programmes. It has also helped to resolve a number of industry issues, including assisting members to obtain business insurance coverage at reasonable rates, and liaising with system vendors to ensure the provision of suitable and reliable management information systems. These are admirable progress and demonstrate the tremendous value that the association can bring to its membership. On this note, let me take the opportunity to congratulate the Council members and the industry on this official launch. Bank Negara Malaysia fully supports the Malaysian Association of Money Services Business in its important endeavour, and we are confident of the significant impact that this Association can make in taking the money services business industry to the next level of development. It now gives me great pleasure to officiate the launch of the Malaysian Association of Money Services Business. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
To be even more explicit; when we formulate our policy we have on several occasions deliberately chosen to allow deviations from the inflation target for short or long periods of time. When the consequences of the deviations have been lower interest rates than would have been the case with a stricter interpretation, there has been practically no criticism. However, it has been rather different with regard to deviations in the other direction. Neither the Riksbank nor any other central bank using inflation targeting can be described as an “inflation nutter”, to borrow a famous phrase from Mervyn King, now Governor of the Bank of England. That is, we do not focus solely on stabilising inflation; we also take into consideration the real economy – conducting what is usually termed flexible rather than strict inflation targeting policy. This is also entirely in line with our task as laid down in law. There are also other types of consideration that need to be made in monetary policy. One that is immediately apparent is how financial stability will be affected by the interest rate decisions. Over the past year, and also on a few earlier occasions, there has been extensive discussion of developments in the credit market at our monetary policy meetings. We have relatively short experience of how credit cycles affect the economy; up until the 1980s the financial markets were strictly regulated. Our knowledge of the risks entailed in a rapid increase in indebtedness and asset prices is thus limited.