With the setting up of the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), appropriate accounting standards have also been put in place to reflect the true and fair value of banking operations to ensure greater accountability and responsibility of the financial institutions. With the increased maturity of our domestic bond market, further steps have been taken by Malaysia to allow foreign corporation, multinational corporations and multilateral agencies to raise funds in the Malaysian bond market with no restrictions for the utilisation of these funds. These funds maybe used to finance foreign investment activities outside the country. Following this liberalisation, the inaugural ringgit denominated sukuk issue was in 2004 by the International Finance Corporation (the investment arm of the IBRD World Bank), followed by the issue by the IBRD World Bank in 2005. In November of 2006, our market was further liberalised to allow for the raising of foreign currency sukuks from our domestic market. More recently, a landmark issuance the 750 million dollars exchangeable sukuk Musyarakah by Khazanah Nasional, the Government's investment arm, marked the world's first issue of its kind, incorporating full convertibility features common to conventional equity-linked transactions. These issues have attracted investors from outside of Malaysia, thereby strengthening our interlinkages with other international financial markets. I am pleased to mention that a memorandum of understanding between the Central Bank of Malaysia and the Japan Bank for International Corporation (JBIC) has been signed this year for us to advance relations in this area between JBIC and the central Bank of Malaysia.

Philipp Hildebrand: In the focus of the Swiss National Bank - economic outlook and monetary policy Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the WGZ-Bank, Luxemburg, 9 September 2005. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The world economy expands at a robust pace but the growth rates of the important economic blocs diverge considerably. In spite of the accommodative monetary policy in most industrial countries, inflation and inflation expectations remain well contained which may, among other things, be due to the process of globalisation and the credibility of central banks. Switzerland, small and extremely open, benefits from a recovering global economy. The conditions for returning to a path of modest expansion look favourable. However, there are certain risks that may affect the global and the Swiss economy negatively. Most importantly, high oil prices and the devastating effect of the hurricane „Katrina”, as well as the possibility of increasing long-term interest rates have to be mentioned. A persistently high price of oil could act as a brake to demand dynamics and growth prospects could also be threatened by soaring long-term interest rates, an effect that could be amplified through the housing channel. In the foreign exchange markets, structural and cyclical factors continue to determine the value of the US-dollar. 1/1