As for the special instruments to provide liquidity, we are currently developing such a mechanism. We believe there could be liquidity provision lines for banks experiencing temporary liquidity shortages, not necessarily because of information attacks, but due also to various other factors. Having said that, we assume that these banks should be either solvent or explicitly capable of restoring their solvency independently in the near future. As we understand it, the intention is not to fund insolvent banks by means of these liquidity lines. We are currently working to determine possible parameters of such liquidity lines and to introduce them to our toolkit, because, as you may see, structural liquidity surplus has saved us the necessity of providing refinancing. The demand for both 312P (BoR loans secured by nonmarketable assets) and refinancing through the use of the Lombard list is falling. We will gradually revise these procedures. We are raising the requirements for securities to be included in the Lombard list and will continue to do so. However, you were certainly right to say that under these conditions such liquidity lines are increasing in significance in the face of unforeseen liquidity shortages in banks. We will certainly be working on it. QUESTION from Reuters: You have mentioned banking licences. Some large state-owned banks, such as Sberbank, as well as some bank products have increased their market share during the crisis. Being a regulator, does the Bank of Russia monitor competition in the banking market? Do you believe Russia still has a competitive banking environment? Thank you.
An economy being a living organism, it is only natural for inflation to hover around 4%, that is, slightly higher or slightly lower on any given day. This figure may appear as early as this year. This is a completely normal situation, without any indication of risk whatsoever. This is the way it should be. Risks may emerge only if we see either a substantial or lengthy deviation in the rate of inflation in either direction from the 4% target. 4 / 14  BIS central bankers' speeches  You will recall that in the early days of inflation targeting this range was defined as 4% plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. We rejected this range, for the following reason: we did this because both analysts and market players were of the opinion that we were aiming for a point outside the middle of this band, with expectations tending towards its upper limit. We decided to put the plug on this scheme and make known our intentions to ensure a sustainable downward movement in the rate of inflation towards the target. However, we leave open the possibility for this variation range to be reinstated once we have hit our 4% inflation target. Such a range exists in many economies, and it is open to variation. I think this issue will be on our agenda this autumn as we develop our Monetary Policy Guidelines; at this time we will look into the need for this range and its potential impact on our communication policy. Thank you.