Petar Goshev: Problems in measuring inflation Opening speech by Mr Petar Goshev, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the workshop “Problems in measuring inflation” organized by the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, Skopje, 22 May 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, Please allow me to welcome you on behalf of the Central Bank, to thank you for your participation in today's workshop, and to wish a fruitful day for all of us present here today. This is the third workshop in the past two years, organized, or as it is now the case, co-organized by the Central Bank, which along with the international conferences and seminars on expert level, which increase in number, have been our new component of activities aimed at: increasing our own professional capacity, opening of the National Bank to the domestic and international expert community for the purpose of mutual improvement of the abilities to identify and solve the problems in the area of macroeconomics and for increasing the transparency in our communication with the public. Today's workshop has been organized in cooperation with the State Statistical Office, and the topic of discussion are the problems related to measuring of inflation. I do not think it is necessary to explain why the State Statistical Office: the State Statistical Office produces the data on inflation, while the National Bank is one of the main users of those data. Why this subject – problems in measuring inflation?
Notwithstanding the above, the French lessons programme is a very challenging one to our staff in that students are not only required to attend, at least, 90 per cent of class work conducted twice a week for two hours, but are also required to take examinations every ten (10) weeks; implying that only those employees who succeed in the examinations are allowed to proceed to the next advanced level. Your Excellency Following the commencement of the French lessons, I am pleased to inform you that this programme has already started showing encouraging results, as evidenced by the fact that at the end of the first segment of the beginners’ course, all those who took the examinations passed and are progressing to the next stage. The results could have been even better had all the 78 enrolled students attended tuition and taken the examination as scheduled. Let me also clarify here that some employees missed the examinations due to the call of duty and not out of lack of commitment. In this regard, I wish to assure Your Excellency that as a sign of commitment on the part of individual employees and the bank, a crush programme has been put in place to enable those who missed the first examination to sit for it and catch up with the rest of the class by April this year.