To that end, regulations must seek to ensure that payment systems are secure, reliable and resilient. Given the increasingly unpredictable sources of risk, regulatory initiatives would benefit from an ‘assumed-breach’ philosophy. Systemically important payment systems must be set up to be able to withstand disruption. This would entail requiring adequate financial buffers and robust business continuity arrangements to preserve the continuity of key payment services under stressed conditions. With increasing digitalisation, cybersecurity incidences have the potential to not only cause significant business disruptions and monetary losses, but also undermine the trust and confidence in the global financial system. Due to the interconnectedness of the global economy, cyber resilience is only as good as the strength of the weakest link. It is important therefore for regulators to formulate and promote the adoption of holistic cybersecurity strategies that are constantly enhanced. This should be complemented by strong public-private collaboration at both domestic and international level to strengthen collective resilience. With payment systems becoming more efficient and interconnected, it is also important to prevent their abuse by illicit actors, such as for money-laundering and terrorism financing (ML/TF). Notably, the availability of instant payments poses challenges to traditional AML monitoring tools that operate on a batch mode, rather than on a real-time basis. Regulations should thus focus on continuous enhancement of AML controls among industry players, supported by improved AML compliance procedures and more advanced monitoring approaches.
The cure in such cases is to achieve primary surpluses in the future, and this can be done in two ways: cutting fixed expenditures or raising taxes. We know, even from our own experience in the 1990s, that this process is painful. On the other hand, there is real danger of conflict between the objectives and directions of the fiscal and monetary policies. Tightened monetary conditions and loosened fiscal conditions have contrary macroeconomic effects, at least on demand. To this we could add the significantly delayed structural reforms which could have supported the resolution of supply-related problems, but have not yet been brought into the focus of the budgeting debate. The combination of these two factors would seriously hinder the endeavours to limit and keep inflation down; and what is more, it would create conditions for return to the macroeconomic imbalances of the recent past. Such a development, inter alia, would have a strongly deleterious effect on the businesses and banks in Bulgaria. Therefore, in terms of greater predictability of the macroeconomic environment dynamics, now one of the major economic policy tasks is to try to synchronise as much as possible the monetary and fiscal conditions in Bulgaria. In the language of  2/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  budgeting, this means accomplishing fiscal consolidation that can be measured by a concrete number: a budget deficit not higher than 3% of GDP.