sada reddy : promoting microfinance in fiji opening speech by mr sada reddy, governor of the reserve bank of fiji, at the third microfinance expo, labasa, 24 september 2010. * * * the commissioner northern, lieutenant colonel inia seruiratu labasa town administrator mr. vijay chand microfinance clients and entrepreneurs representatives of banks and financial institutions government agencies and ngos people of labasa distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen introductory remarks bula si ’ a and a very good morning to you all. it is a real pleasure for me to be here today in labasa on this occasion. the reception we received since arriving yesterday has been overwhelming. indeed the people of this region live up to your reputation as “ the friendly north ”. i am sure that the macuata province is still celebrating its rugby team ’ s successful challenge and promotion to play amongst the big boys in the 2011 digicel cup, after the win over the namosi rugby team last weekend. congratulations and well done! we have been monitoring with much anticipation the developments that have been taking place here in the north. we want to be part of it and this is the reason we are here today. i wish to acknowledge the tremendous support we have received from the commissioner northern ’ s office and all the stakeholders here today in organizing this event. thank you very much! this is the third microfinance expo organized by the reserve bank this year. the support and co - ordination that we have received in all three have been fantastic. our partners are here again today – the banks, financial institutions, the non - bank financial institutions, investment agencies, government agencies, mobile network operators, ngos, mfis, the ncsmed and the micro enterprises. all combine their efforts to promote greater awareness about financial inclusion and microfinance. it is a good example of the public, private sectors and civil society partnership towards common goals. results are produced through such coordination and understanding. at the end of the day, it is the general population that will benefit from such collaboration. why promote microfinance? some of you may be wondering why the reserve bank of fiji is so keen on promoting microfinance. various studies on microfinance around the world have shown the significant improvement in the lives of people through the outreach of microfinance. it has : contributed significantly in tackling poverty ; seen improvements in housing, health & sanitation ; resulted in better access to education ; and more particularly the

and crypto - assets – as the two techniques of key encapsulation and digital signature currently used are both based on asymmetric encryption, which is vulnerable to the quantum threat. it will be of outmost importance to factor in the risks stemming from quantum computing when designing the central bank digital currencies. this risk is already on the table with the practice of'harvest now, decrypt later'used by malicious actors. information embedded in contracts currently in force needs to be kept secret for years to come. even just the possibility that some of it will be exposed – as soon as the technology becomes available – is already a potential blow to trust. 2 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches 2. the state of the art : one problem, many potential technical approaches as we will see through the lunch session, some solutions to mitigate cyber issues are already available. the heart of cybersecurity lies in cryptography, which – from encrypting data to securing online transactions – is the guardian of our digital world. as the financial industry and governments prepare to protect against quantum threats, it is necessary that they become'crypto - agile ', adopting a multifaceted security strategy that incorporates a range of easily upgradable quantum - resistant solution. the showcase exercise that will be performed in this session will demonstrate that there are two different but complementary approaches that can be used in order to deal with quantum - safe cryptography. on the one hand, we can take advantage of quantum properties to establish secure communication channels between parties, where any attempt to eavesdrop or intercept the exchange of encryption keys is detected. on the other hand, considering that the cryptography involves the use of mathematical algorithms to transform readable data into encrypted data and vice versa, it is possible to replace the current algorithms ( unbreakable now, but solvable with quantum computing ) with others that are more difficult to solve, even for a quantum computer. each one of these technologies – or a combination of them – will allow full end - to - end security in our digital communications. at the same time, however, these technologies are all extremely demanding in terms of time and resources. at the current state of the technology, embracing the quantum physics approach is estimated to impose costs of a higher order of magnitude, though it appears to provide a definitive solution to the quantum threat. the showcase exercise will demonstrate how some solutions already available to the market work, leveraging the points