Page 6 of 11  The quality of living may not be as well as they are used to, but still might be better than in other countries that do not have that rural sector nor informal social safety net to support them. These factors contributed to our long-standing resiliency and make Thailand, despite all of the problems, is still a good place to do business. The second reason is something that you probably heard many times so I will not go into much detail, is that our business and other infrastructures are acceptable. The logistic-type infrastructure and basic infrastructure - water and electricity- are adequate, and government’s investments in the context of the Eastern Economic Corridor, for example, U-tapao airport, or even some of the railway investments, are being undertaken. Overall, these infrastructures continue to improve. The other infrastructure that we have done a better job recently, is not just on the physical, nor logistics infrastructure but on the digital infrastructure. We have seen that the COVID-19 has actually speeded up some of the underlying trends towards digitalization. For example, we saw our digital payment system called Prompt Pay hit a record high in terms of the number of transactions as a result of the COVID crisis when everybody is shopping and making transactions online. We are also seeing a greater usage of digital technology even in the government support schemes.
Peter Praet: The ECB’s asset purchase programme – the impact so far Speech by Mr Peter Praet, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the Eurofi conference, Luxembourg, 9 September 2015. *  *  *  The ECB’s expanded asset purchase programme has met with our initial expectations. First of all, it has strongly signalled the ECB’s commitment to deliver its medium-term price stability objective, which has in turn been reflected in an upward shift in inflation expectations at all horizons. In keeping with this, any second round effects on inflation from the steep drop in oil prices last year appear to have been forestalled, and the tightening of medium-term real rates we saw towards the end of last year has been reversed (though the path of real rates implied by markets has recently steepened noticeably). More generally, the signalling effect of the APP has been visible in solidifying business and consumer confidence underpinning a broadening economic recovery. The expanded APP, together with our credit easing package launched in summer 2014, has also had a positive impact on both market and bank credit dynamics. The cost of marketbased debt fell to historically low levels in the early part of 2015, and though it has risen in recent months, financing flows have remained robust. This implies a “first order” monetary policy effect from our interventions.