Anita Angelovska-Bezoska: Statistics – challenging and fundamental issues for central bankers Speech by Ms Anita Angelovska-Bezoska, Vice-Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the joint National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia-ECB seminar on statistics for participants from the region, Skopje, 2–5 October 2013. *  *  *  Dear guests, dear colleagues, On behalf of the NBRM, let me express my warm gratitude to the ECB for co-organizing the event and to all participants for their preparedness to share their experiences, identify the main strengths and weaknesses and pinpoint the main challenges in their own work field. It gives me a great pleasure to welcome you at today’s joint event, which I am sure will provide an excellent platform to discuss statistics, as one of the most challenging and fundamental issues for central bankers and policy makers, in general. By now, we are all aware of the fact that timely, reliable and relevant data are sine qua non for a good policy making. The higher the quality of statistics, the larger the probability for timely and proper decisions. The recent “great recession” has brought to the fore many deficiencies in the fundamentals of the global economy, in the architecture of the global financial system, in the set-up of the policy decision making process, but also in the area of statistics which is one of the main ingredients for a good economic analysis and policy making.
Ardian Fullani: Economic developments during the second semester of 2004 and expectations for year 2005 Statement by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, Tirana, 28 January 2005. *  *  *  The second part of 2004 has generated a larger economic activity, marking a certain general impulse, especially after a relatively quiet start of the year. The acceleration of production growth is reflected almost in all the economy sectors, while the major objectives of the economy have been achieved in conformity with the overall programme of the country's economic and financial development. At international level, this semester coincided with an acceleration of the confirmed tendencies in the first part of the year, especially with regard to US dollar performance and oil price rise. The Fed monetary policy has changed the monetary policy tendency, during this period, through some successive increases of the core interest rate, in attempting to prevent the inflationary pressures in the economy. On the other side, the European Central Bank, considering the inflation performance and the strong pressure against the Euro has deemed unreasonable to change the core interest rate, keeping it at the level of 2 percent for almost a year and half. Annual inflation in December resulted 2.2 percent, while the average annual inflation was only 2.9 percent. The maintenance of inflation within the targeted range was mainly attributed to the stable macroeconomic situation, the control of domestic demand of the economy and monetary indicators stability.