Speaking of the past, I cannot help remembering that in the early nineties, when I took over as Governor of the National Bank of Romania, a tremendous effort was needed – not only in Romania, but also in the other former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe – to go from a monobank-type system to a two-tier system. The effort was even bigger in a country like Romania, where – after some attempts to implement reforms in the sixties and seventies – the economic and financial system had become ever more centralised, more Stalinist-like in the final decade of the communist regime. In hindsight, now that things have settled, these changes may seem like a piece of cake, but please try to imagine how difficult it was to take the reins of an institution that had operated in the context of centralised state planning of the entire economic activity. There was no trace of monetary policy and commercial banking operations needed to be separated from central bank operations. The former were taken over by Banca Comercială Română, later part of the Erste Bank group, while monetary policy became the responsibility of the National Bank of Romania. The “parting of the waters” occurred pretty quickly, but the new NBR only accounted for less than 5 percent of the former central bank employees, most of them in cash management and accounting.
The Bank of Albania deems that though the cautious consumer behaviour has not made any direct impact on economic growth over this period, it has helped keep risk premia on track and has led to low long-term interest rates, thus contributing to boosting private investments. Looking forward, we deem that the fiscal policy should retain its orientation toward fiscal indicators sustainability, supporting Albania’s economic and monetary stability and being an important pre-requisite for a stable and long-term growth. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Foreign demand continued to support the growth of exports and economic activity throughout 2012. Trade deficit narrowed by 7.9% in the third quarter, reflecting mainly the good performance of exports. The latter increased by 17% in the third quarter, retaining the previous quarters’ positive trend. On the other hand, imports performed poorly, reflecting the low demand for consumption and investment. In the third quarter, imports recorded positive annual growth of only 0.7%. Performance of monetary indicators attests to moderate pressures on monetary inflation. The annualised broad money growth rate decelerated to 6.8% in September. Reflecting the sluggish domestic demand, economic agents’ demand for money has been low. The weak demand for money has been associated with a constantly falling contribution of funding from public and private sectors to increasing the monetary supply throughout 2012. Private sector’s contribution continued to slow during this month; its annual growth rate reached 4.2%, recording one of the lowest historical levels.