In its role as the regulator, the Bank of Albania’s vision is to contribute to the future, aiming to establish a highly adequate environment for boosting financial innovations and modernising the financial structure. Our regulatory regime aims at fostering innovation, being a positive catalyser and not a barrier. We aim at being avant-garde for a modern financial infrastructure. But experience shows that technology always is a step ahead and rapidly spreading. Technology has no limits and we, as regulators, should adopt rules and laws that these technologies be used by the consumers, individuals or businesses. At the same time, we should be aware of the risks that accompany these new technologies. Finding a perfect balance between the promotion of new ideas and the regulatory prudence constitutes one of the major challenges in this regard. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Bank of Albania has designed a payments regulatory framework, which paved the way for the development and modernisation. This framework provides all banks or other suppliers of financial services with the possibility to access the payment system in an equal and transparent way, thus contributing to the development of a competitive payment industry, without any asymmetry. Bank of Albania welcomes the contribution of innovation and technology in financial services as a support for achieving its strategic objectives for financial inclusion and reduction of cash use in the economy. These objectives serve crucially to both the transmission of the monetary policy and the safeguarding of financial stability.
One significant characteristic of the current expansionary period is the fact that the sustained growth of activity has given rise to a high rate of increase in employment. Here, however, much remains to be done, since the current level of occupation is still some distance off the pre-2008 level. Another notable feature of the current recovery is the progress made in restoring macroeconomic and financial equilibria. This is playing a key role when it comes to explaining the intensity and duration of the current upturn. In this respect, it is worth mentioning the continuing and notable positive external balance and the subsequent reduction in the economy’s – and in particular the private sector’s – over-indebtedness; such progress has proven vital for restoring the confidence of foreign investors and of Spanish households and firms. The current account balance stood at close to 2% of GDP in 2017, a similar figure to that observed the previous year and up on the figures recorded in the early years of the recovery. True, some factors that have contributed to this improvement in the economy’s external balance have effects that tail off over time. This is the case of oil prices which, despite their recent rise, remain lower than those in force until mid-2014. Also, the improvement in financing conditions in recent years has provided for significantly lower interest payments abroad. Other explanatory factors behind the improvement in the balance vis-à-vis the rest of the world are structural in nature.