Functions
After the charge of monetary and exchange rate policies was shifted in 1998 to the European Central Bank, within the European institutional framework, the bank implements the decisions, issues euro banknotes and withdraws and destroys worn pieces.
The main function has thus become banking and financial supervision. The objective is to ensure the stability and efficiency of the system and compliance to rules and regulations; the bank pursues it through secondary legislation, controls and cooperation with governmental authorities.
Following reform in 2005, which was prompted by takeover scandals, the bank has lost exclusive antitrust authority in the credit sector, which is now shared with Italy's Antitrust Authority.
Other functions include, market supervision, oversight of the payment system and provision of settlement services, State treasury service, Central Credit Register, economic analysis and institutional consultancy.
Bank of Italy gold reserves are 2,451.8 tonnes (2006).
Read more about this topic: Banca D'Italia
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)