Governor Boris Vujčić's speech at the FBF Executive Seminar Published: 4/7/2023  Governer Vujčić held a keynote speech at the FBF Executive Seminar "European finance in 2020s: new risks in a volatile world" organized by Florence School of Banking and Finance - The European University Institute on the 29 June 2023 Keynote speech at the Florence School of Banking and Finance Executive Seminar June 29, 2023  Introduction Over the last ten days that I have been on the road I spoke about CBDC to bankers, about the war in Croatia and economic lessons for the Ukraine, important, but heavy topic, and, of course, about monetary policy, interest rates and the balance sheet. So, I am happy to have been given a different topic for the last speech – financial stability. Thorsten told me to speak either about what the entry into the euro area means for the financial stability of Croatia, or about the risks to financial stability. I shall try to combine both and tell you what I have learned about financial stability from Croatian experience over the last 30 years, and how I see things now that we got into the euro area and the banking union. Over the last three decades, the Croatian banking system went through a transformation from a group of mostly bankrupt socialist financial institutions into a set of strictly supervised, overwhelmingly private, internationalised companies with strong corporate governance.
In addition, an upswing is likely to be held back by product and labour market rigidities. BIS Review 19/2002  1  So all in all, it is hard to see how the coming economic upswing can be as rapid as earlier recoveries. But the world economic picture is now appreciably brighter than last autumn and the outlines of an upturn are becoming increasingly clear. Inflation in Sweden is high If the picture we present in the Inflation Report holds good, the present cyclical dip in the Swedish economy will turn out to have been the mildest for over thirty years. GDP growth was admittedly subdued in 2001 but the figures from Statistics Sweden do not show any negative rates. Neither has the labour market deteriorated as much as usual. Nor have any serious imbalances arisen. So thus far there is reason to be positive about the economic situation; most leading indicators point to an economic recovery, with an upturn in activity during 2002. There is, however, the problem that inflation has for a time been clearly above the Riksbank’s 2 per cent target. To a certain extent the comparatively high inflation can be explained by various supply shocks that have raised the prices of electricity, meat, fruit and vegetables, for instance. The background to these shocks includes the previous winter’s low precipitation for hydroelectric power, livestock diseases and poor harvests due to last autumn’s unusually cold weather in Europe.