There are several structural challenges facing the global economy. I want to elaborate on two key driving forces that will shape the medium-term outlook in both the advanced and emerging economies: deleveraging and monetary expansion. Deleveraging 8. Let me begin with deleveraging. From around 1990, debt levels began to rise rapidly in most advanced economies. Governments ran persistent fiscal deficits that were financed by borrowing. Total government debt in the OECD economies grew relentlessly, from 58% of GDP in 1990 to 98% in 2010. Households went on a consumption binge, financed by easy borrowings on the back of rising property prices and housing equity. Household debt in the developed economies also climbed, from 62% in 2000, to 76% in 2010. Deleveraging is the process by which this excessive debt is brought down to more sustainable levels. This will be long-drawn, only because the build-up of leverage took place over such a long period of time. Synchronised deleveraging in the US and EU 9. The deleveraging process that is unfolding across the advanced economies is taking place across three fronts:   Governments in the US and EU    Households in the US    Banks in the Eurozone  10. First, deleveraging by governments. The public finances of the US, UK, and the Eurozone, have substantially deteriorated, due to pre-crisis fiscal profligacy and post-crisis discretionary stimulus. These countries have now embarked on fiscal adjustment programmes to varying degrees, primarily through austerity measures.
This significant strengthening of the trade relations with the EU member states is mostly a result of the intensified trade with Germany, and moreover, such development is fully conditioned by the increase in the exports of RM to Germany. Thus the share of the export of goods to Germany in the total export of goods of RM in 2008 equaled 14%, while in 2013 it climbed to high 36%, or in absolute amounts, from Euro 383 million, for only five years, it reached Euro 1,154 million. It is a significant increase, a triple increase. It means that, despite the crisis in the Euro area and its negative implications, the strong economy based on sound and solid economic fundaments – such as the German, proved to be our certain partner for placement of more than a third of the exports. Besides the traditional export products, i.e. the export of the domestic textile and metal manufacturing industry, in the last two years, Germany is important destination for export of the new capacities in the technological industrial development zones (TIDZs), i.e. for the export of machinery and equipment and equipment of automotive industry. Second, Germany is our significant investor, which in 2013 advanced on the list of the ten most important foreign direct investors (9th).