Ladies and Gentlemen, Moving forward, consumer and SME financing will continue to be two important areas of growth. The overall macroeconomic and interest rate environment would continue to be supportive of growth in these two sectors. The challenge for banking institutions is to ensure that consumers and the businesses have access to a wide range of products, while at the same time ensuring that the necessary infrastructure is in place to manage risks arising from these businesses. This is to ensure that lending to these sectors would be sustainable and avoid the risks that have recently been experienced in a number of other countries in this region. While focusing on consumer and SME financing, banking institutions should also recognise the emergence of a number of new growth sectors in the economy, including activities in the services sector, and the agriculture and agro-based industries. These areas represent opportunities that can be capitalised upon by the banking institutions. While these may be viewed as non-traditional areas, banking institutions that introduce new lending models and products to cater to the financial requirements of these areas would have the early advantage in capitalising the potential of these new markets. In this regard, the main theme of this year's dialogue, is "Tapping Opportunities in the New Growth Areas - Fostering Best Lending Practices", for discussion by the banking community. We are very pleased to have four distinguished speakers to share with us their expertise and experiences in building successful and sustainable portfolios in consumer lending, SME financing, microcredit and agriculture financing.

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