to continue to drive the economy forward but also the industry sector is expected to contribute favorably if the millennium challenge account projects are implemented. the agriculture sector is also anticipated to improve in 2006. • the balance of payment of the country outlook appears favorable. official international reserves have increased to a comfortable level of 6 months of import cover in may 2006, and are expected to continue to increase in 2006.

liquidity to the financial system. these actions, together with similar measures in many other countries, appeared to stabilize the situation and to improve investor confidence in financial firms. notably, spreads on credit default swaps for large u. s. banking organizations, which had widened substantially over the previous few weeks, declined sharply on the day of the joint announcement. going forward, the ability of the treasury to use the tarp to inject capital into financial institutions and to take other steps to stabilize the financial system – including any actions that might be needed to prevent the disorderly failure of a systemically important financial institution – will be critical for restoring confidence and promoting the return of credit markets to more normal functioning. as i noted earlier, the federal reserve has taken a range of policy actions to provide liquidity to the financial system and thus promote the extension of credit to households and u. s. department of the treasury, emergency economic stabilization act website. businesses. our recent actions have focused on the market for commercial paper, which is an important source of short - term financing for many financial and nonfinancial firms. normally, money market mutual funds are major lenders in the commercial paper markets. however, in mid - september, a large fund suffered losses and heavy redemptions, causing it to suspend further redemptions and then close. in the next few weeks, investors withdrew almost $ 500 billion from prime money market funds. the funds, concerned about their ability to meet further redemptions, began to reduce their purchases of commercial paper and limit the maturity of such paper to only overnight or other very short maturities. as a result, interest rate spreads paid by issuers on longer - maturity commercial paper widened significantly, and issuers were exposed to the costs and risks of having to roll over increasingly large amounts of paper each day. the federal reserve has developed three programs to address these problems. the first allows money market mutual funds to sell asset - backed commercial paper to banking organizations, which are then permitted to borrow against the paper on a non - recourse basis from the federal reserve bank of boston. usage of that facility peaked at around $ 150 billion. the facility contributed importantly to the ability of money funds to meet redemption pressures when they were most intense and remains available as a backstop should such pressures reemerge. the second program involves the funding of a special - purpose vehicle that purchases highly rated commercial paper issued by financial and nonfinancial businesses at a term of three months. this facility