Allow me to express my sincere gratitude to Mr Benoît Cœuré, Executive Board member of the ECB and Mr. Tao Zhang, Deputy Managing Director at the IMF, for honoring us with their presence today. 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  It is a pleasure to have Mr. Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, Deputy General Manager at BIS and Governor Gudmundsson to address the audience. I would also like to express my appreciation to all other distinguished panelists in the today’s sessions – deputy governors, representatives from international organizations, global banks and investors and other honorable speakers for contributing to the event. It is an honor to have Mr. Dragan Tevdovski, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Macedonia and Mr. Vladislav Goranov, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Bulgaria to give their reflections on SEE region perspectives. I look forward to your discussions and wish all the delegates an enjoyable and rewarding conference day. I thank you all for coming, particularly given that many of you had to travel long distances to come to Skopje. I hope that all of you will enjoy the agenda and find the conference productive and worthwhile. In closing, I would like to thank all of those who have worked very hard to make this event happen. My most sincere thanks and appreciation goes to our co-organizer Marc Uzan, Executive Director of The Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee. Marc’s work is wellrecognized among the global economic community.
I am also grateful to Senior Deputy Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, and the Deputy Governors, Mr. K D Ranasinghe, Mr. S R Attygalle and Mr. H A Karunaratne. Their support and contribution in terms of highly professional advice and excellent technical expertise helped me to effectively discharge the duties as the CEO of this iconic institution. I would also like to acknowledge the extraordinary service rendered by former Deputy Governor, Mr. C J P Siriwardana, who retired from the Bank service last year. I am also thankful to the members of the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee, Financial System Stability Consultative Committee as well as the Monetary Board Advisory Audit Committee for their valuable views and suggestions, which helped us immensely in better calibrating our policies and operations. 42  Last and most importantly, I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the Assistant Governors, Senior Heads and Heads of Departments, particularly the Director of Economic Research and the Staff of the Economic Research Department for their effort in producing this policy document. It is my pleasure to acknowledge my colleagues in the Governor’s Secretariat who support me on a day-to-day basis. I would be lost without their assistance. In my view, the greatest asset of the Central Bank is its staff without whom we cannot deliver our tasks and achieve our objectives for the nation. I thank all Staff of the Central Bank who serve the nation with professionalism, technical excellence and integrity and more importantly with vigour and enthusiasm even amidst turbulences.