2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Most FinTech ventures, globally, have indeed not succeeded to date. The real stress test of any new idea in finance is the economic and credit cycle. But even where new players fail, they usually leave behind an idea – an idea to be modified, taken over or improved. We must allow for this experimentation, but we must do it in a way that preserves trust and credibility in our financial system. That is foremost in our minds. So regulators are watching this carefully. We have to allow for innovation. But any player that acquires a meaningful scale in finance should expect to be regulated like any other financial institution in their business. There must be a level playing field, and there are to begin with good reasons for why regulations exist. We cannot stifle innovation. We must let people come up with new ideas, and let them run with it. But once they acquire meaningful scale in the financial sector, they should expect regulation. Ten years from now, finance will be very different. We can’t say exactly how. But we in Singapore intend to be a key player in innovation in finance. A key player in advancing ways to help consumers with their needs as lenders, borrowers, as makers of payments. In Singapore and the Asia-Pacific. We will go about this very energetically in Singapore, especially in developing common infrastructure or utilities, as I just mentioned. Ravi will be going through some of our strategies.
First, I will summarize the recent inflation developments, and then compare the short term forecasts in the October Inflation Report with the actual inflation data regarding the fourth quarter of 2011. There were a few developments in the interreporting period which led inflation to deviate significantly from October forecasts. More-than-envisaged increases in unprocessed food prices were an important cause of this deviation. The ongoing depreciation in the Turkish lira amid the deterioration in the risk appetite was another factor leading to a deviation in short-term forecasts (Chart 8). BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Chart 8. October 2011 Inflation Forecasts and Realizations  * Shaded region indicates the 70 percent confidence interval for the forecast. Owing to the lagged effects of the exchange rate pass-through, core inflation indicators remained at elevated levels during the final quarter (Chart 9). This mainly stemmed from soaring core goods prices, while the moderate course of the underlying trend of services inflation indicated a benign outlook in terms of second round effects (Chart 10). Chart 9. Chart 10. Core Inflation Indicators SCA-H and SCA-I  Prices of Core Goods and Services  (Seasonally Adjusted, 3-Month Average, Annual Percent Change)  Source: TurkStat, CBRT. (Seasonally Adjusted, 3-Month Average, Annual Percent Change)  Source: TurkStat, CBRT. We see that economic activity remained robust in the second half of 2011, despite a slight deceleration. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data pointed that domestic demand proved stronger in the third quarter of 2011 compared to the outlook presented in the October Inflation Report (Chart 11).