Gent Sejko: Welcome remarks - 16th SEE Economic Research Workshop Welcome remarks by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the 16th SEE Economic Research Workshop, Tirana, 5 December 2022. *** Your Excellency Ambassador Huber, Dear guests and speakers from central banks, academia and research institutions, Dear colleagues, Welcome in the 16th South-Eastern European Economic Research Workshop. It is a great pleasure hosting this event in-person this year, as we hoped in the last workshop, even though only partially, after two years of holding its proceeds virtually. One lesson learned and adopted from the pandemic, in a broader dimension, was how to operate in a virtual environment and ensure that all our participants can be fully engaged in these proceedings-whether you're here in person or joining us virtually. I take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to all of you for your continuous dedication and precious contribution. I'm really grateful that this initiative, which has started 16 years ago, has grown and has taken such dimensions, by enforcing and extending over the years the cooperation between central bankers, academics and policymakers not only within the SEE region, but from all over the world. As in many prestigious central banks, even at the Bank of Albania, the economic research has an important role in its overall activity, by providing continuous support to both policy design and implementation processes through the novel and sophisticated empirical tools adopted for policy analysis and forecasting.
The BIS recently underlined this complementarity between public and commercial money in its report published on Friday. I would therefore like us to build a public/private partnership. The potential impacts on the banking industry and financial stability could be controlled using different means: for example, by having the retail central bank digital currency distributed by the banks, directly to individuals; and by limiting the amount of digital euro in circulation to prevent an excessive conversion of deposited commercial bank money into CBDC. ** In conclusion, I would like to repeat a conviction: Fintechs are no longer separate from the world of finance. They are transforming the practices of financial institutions, their relations with customers – we can see it clearly with payments – as well as their relations with supervisory authorities: new technologies are useful not only for improving crisis prevention and management, but also for optimising the work of the supervisor. We are talking about Regtech and Suptech. All these dimensions will be taken into account in the Banque de France’s next strategic plan, “Building 2024 together”. Thank you for your attention. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches