global crisis provides further support to this notion. sweden ’ s growth rate rebounded post - crisis, but should be roughly in line with its average over the previous decade as the global economy recovers in coming years. in south africa ’ s case, the floating currency supported economic growth in the wake of the argentine crisis of 2001, and in the current crisis the economy suffered a quite modest decline in the economy of 1. 7 % in 2009. other factors also played an important role in supporting the economy in this period, including counter - cyclical fiscal policy and sustained high commodity prices. real currency depreciation is, however, only one part of what it takes for economies to weather adverse shocks or to counter domestic economic developments that weaken competitiveness. achieving a new sustainable economic growth rate after a shock or internal adversity requires economic adjustment – changes in rates of return to different economic activities and shifts in labour and capital between those activities. adjustment should be easier to achieve when an economy is reasonably diversified. for south africa, large commodity, manufacturing, financial and services sectors helps to keep the economy going even when one or more of them runs into trouble. this economic diversification is also critical to thinking about where to get the financial means to assist the economic adjustment process. and here an important idea comes from norway, with which south africa shares a commonality in a strong natural resource base. the idea is to shepherd natural resource earnings and use it for long term, inter - generational, development. there are various ways this use of resource rents can be channelled into higher welfare, through direct transfers of income to households, stronger communitarian claims on private sector firms involved in extraction, or through more highly developed public services. but achieving anything via these channels depends on some ground rules being set out and protected in policy, regulation and / or law. one ground rule is the approach taken by the fiscal authorities to set the taxation of the resource rent at a level commensurate with sustainable long - term extraction and the life of the endowment. another ground rule is how to manage the pay out of the revenues accruing from the resource. the benefit to citizens needs to spread over generations, rather than consumed up - front. this implies that public borrowing needs to be carefully managed to ensure that future resource revenues are not committed in advance to debt repayment. a focus on long - run infrastructure development by the public finance authorities could help to ensure that additional borrowing pays back the debt without reducing the

increase, the benefits from multilateral netting at an industry level have become increasingly important. before i briefly share with you how our participation in the cls has grown over the years, allow me to go down memory lane for a short while. foreign - exchange settlement risk – being the risk that originates from a situation where, in a foreign - exchange trade, one party has irrevocably paid a currency and the counterparty subsequently fails to meet its side of the deal by not delivering the other currency on time – captured the attention of regulators as a major source of systemic risk following the spectacular collapse of bankhaus herstatt in germany in 1974. the creation of the cls goes back to regulatory concerns around the collapse of bankhaus herstatt. in march 1996, the committee on payment and settlement systems ( cpss ) at the bank for international settlements ( bis ) published the so - called allsopp report titled settlement risk in foreign - exchange transactions – a strategy for addressing foreign - exchange settlement risk. this report called for action from the private sector to address settlement risk in the foreign - exchange market. the response of the private sector led to the establishment of the cls and the launch of the cls system with 39 members and seven currencies : the bis central bankers ’ speeches australian dollar, canadian dollar, euro, japanese yen, swiss franc, uk pound sterling, and us dollar in september 2002. since then, the system has evolved to the current state where foreign - exchange transactions in 17 currencies are settled with a peak volume to date of over 2 million transactions per day and a peak value of more than us $ 10 trillion per day. in its evolution, the cls added four more currencies in september 2003 : the danish krone, norwegian krone, singapore dollar, and swedish krona. in december 2004, a further four currencies were added to the settlement service, namely the hong kong dollar, korean won, new zealand dollar, and south african rand. the currencies of israel and mexico were implemented on the system in 2008. joining the cls in 2004 was a major achievement for south africa given the stringent eligibility criteria. in briefing parliament at the time about the risk management, liquidity, and efficiency benefits of the cls system, then minister of finance, mr trevor manuel, put it rather succinctly, and i quote : “ the inclusion ( … ) demonstrates that the south african payment system provides