Vujčić: Digital money is one of the key issues in finance

The regular annual meeting of national bank governors of countries in the region was held in Pula on Friday. Among the issues discussed was the introduction of digital currencies, which participants agreed were inevitable.

The outgoing Governor of the Croatian National Bank (HNB) Boris Vujčić said on Friday that digital assets, digital money and new financial technologies are among the key topics of the present and future of the financial world.

"The development of digital money is unstoppable in various ways, from cryptocurrencies that are primarily speculative in nature and are used for some transactions, sometimes even in the illegal world, to stablecoins that are tied to the value of a stable currency such as the US dollar and are recording growth, but still make up a very small part of the world of money, or total assets," Vujčić said after the meeting of the regional governors.

Vujčić highlighted the development of central bank digital currencies, including the digital euro, which, as he stated, is a version of digital cash that should enable easy payments across Europe in the future, at every retailer and on every POS device that supports the European payment solution.

"The development of such a system is also linked to strengthening Europe's strategic autonomy in the area of payments, given that a large part of today's transactions go through American service providers such as Visa and MasterCard," Vujčić said.

The Governor of the Croatian National Bank stressed that the price competitiveness of Croatian tourism should be taken into account, because in recent years, real tourist spending has been falling. He also highlighted the growing differences in the structure of inflation in Croatia: "That's because we have deflation, the price of goods is falling while there is a continuity of increased inflation in the price of services, which has been holding steady at above seven percent for months now. So we have a total dichotomy, where goods are getting cheaper and services are getting more expensive."

Source: HRT