and there are still many challenges facing us. the hkma has therefore embarked on a review of our debt market development with a view to identifying measures which can be adopted to help market development. on the demand side, everybody knows that the mainland of china is enjoying a rapid economic growth and business opportunities are mushrooming. the recent announcement by the mainland authorities of measures to liberalise portfolio investment outflows has marked the emergence of such kind of opportunity for hong kong. under these new rules, each chinese citizen is allowed, among other things, to invest in fixed income securities overseas within certain limits. we expect that this will help boost the demand for fixed income securities although we do not know exactly how much such investment outflows will be approved by the mainland authorities in the initial years. given our experience and achievements in financial services and the fact that we are the only international financial centre of china, i am sure that hong kong is well positioned to grasp the opportunity. apart from the initiatives and developments i just mentioned, i believe that it would be useful to highlight a few fundamental factors which make hong kong an ideal place for the bond market. the first is our free capital mobility. the absence of capital controls means that there are no restrictions on foreign enterprises using our capital markets to raise funds. foreign investors can also freely invest in our markets and easily remit the proceeds back home. secondly, our well - developed financial markets, including derivative markets, would allow issuers and investors to manage any interest rate risk or exchange rate risk effectively. thirdly, hong kong has a critical mass of financial institutions which stand ready to support issuers to tap the capital markets. hong kong is also an asset management centre thus providing a large investor base for debt instruments. last but not least, the absence of capital gains tax and interest withholding tax would also favour bond market development. our exceptional geographical, cultural and language advantages also make hong kong an ideal place to link up the mainland of china with the rest of world. on our part, the hkma will continue to play a leading role in enhancing the development of the debt market in hong kong, by removing market frictions and unnecessary restrictions, and by keeping up with the best practices adopted in other well - developed markets. lastly, i would like to thank euromoney again for inviting me to speak. i look forward to the continued cooperation with our partners on the healthy development of the bond market in this region. thank you.

custodian system for debt instruments in hong kong, and other custodian systems in the region and international custodian systems such as the euroclear and clearstream. these linkages have been instrumental in fostering cross - border bond trading and investment. with the seamless interfaces between the cmu and the real time gross settlement ( rtgs ) systems in hong kong for the hong kong dollar, us dollar and euro, all transactions in debt instruments denominated in any of these three currencies and under the custodianship of the cmu can be settled in hong kong on a dvp basis in an efficient way. the recent ipo of the bank of china limited is probably a good example to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our hkd rtgs system : being a settlement system which typically handles an average turnover of $ 400 to $ 500 billion hong kong dollars a day, it saw a record high turnover of $ 1. 23 trillion on 1 june when the bank of china was listed on that day. notwithstanding such huge amount of settlement, the inter - bank payments were processed smoothly on that day. to further develop hong kong into a payment and settlement hub for the region, we will continue to explore opportunities for linking our rtgs systems and the cmu with similar systems in the region. for example, the hkma has been working with bank negara malaysia for the establishment of a link between the ringgit rtgs system and the us dollar rtgs system in hong kong. this is aimed at reducing the settlement risk of ringgit / us dollar foreign exchange transactions through pvp settlement in the asian time zone. the link is expected to go live by the end of 2006. we are exploring similar linkages with other asian central banks. bond price bulletin one of the factors affecting secondary market activities in the bond market is the lack of information on bond prices. to help overcome this problem, the hkma launched the bond price bulletin at the beginning of 2006. the bulletin provides investors with convenient on - line access to information on bond products and bond prices provided by eight major banks in hong kong. indicative bid / offer prices of over 200 bonds of different currencies issued by both public and private sector entities are provided by the eight contributing banks. outlook let me now turn to talk about the outlook of our debt market. notwithstanding the achievements we have made so far in developing our debt market, we fully appreciate that there is nothing to be complacent