Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Banking liberalisation’s next chapter digital banks Keynote address by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at The Association of Banks in Singapore’s Annual Dinner, Singapore, 28 June 2019. * * * Chairman and Council Members of the ABS, Ladies and gentlemen, Thank you for inviting me to join you this evening. Our objectives in liberalising banking 2. I would like to talk this evening about our next steps in liberalising our banking system, and in taking advantage of the ongoing digital revolution in finance. 3. It will be a new phase in our banking system. But the spirit of what we intend to do, and the calibrated way in which we will move forward, is similar to the approach we have taken over the last twenty years, from the time we began liberalising the industry. 4. MAS embarked in 1999 on a major programme to open up and liberalise Singapore’s financial sector across the board, in banking, our securities markets and in insurance. 5. We did so to ensure we remained a competitive and growing centre for finance in Asia and globally. But enhanced competition was also a way to spur our local banks themselves to upgrade and innovate so that they remained strong anchors in our banking system, and to expand into markets abroad. 6. We took a calculated risk. The risk was not trivial, as we began opening up in the midst of the Asian financial crisis.
Ardian Fullani: China-Europe economy – future challenges and opportunities Address by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the China-Europe Economists Symposium on “China-Europe economy – future challenges and opportunities”, Tirana, 17 January 2013. *  *  *  Dear Mr. Chairman, Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great pleasure for me to participate in this Symposium. The rapidly evolving economic landscape of the past few years poses to policy-makers a demanding set of challenges and opportunities. I am sure that the honest and productive exchange of ideas will facilitate a deeper understanding of the problems we are facing and will allow us to design more appropriate strategies for overcoming them. Introduction Our topics of discussion today focus on the performance and prospects of China and Europe, the two economic regions which probably are at the opposite ends of the spectrum of contagion from the global crisis. While China has remained largely unaffected, Europe has suffered significantly. The crisis exposed fundamental structural and institutional weaknesses in the Eurozone and the EU. In my short address, I will concentrate on the current state of Europe’s economic and financial situation. It would be almost an understatement to define the past, the current and the expected developments in the Europe, as difficult and short-term. The so-called “Great Depression” tested the Eurozone and the European economy. EU convergence process proved to be incomplete, from economic and institutional point of view.