as well as the rising global commodity prices is reminiscent of the fact that nowadays, no economy is sheltered from shocks stemming from outside its territory. while we all recognise that globalisation has provided for great opportunities, well, it has also brought with it challenges. right now, as you are all aware and as being widely broadcast, food and other commodity - driven pressures which also include the high oil prices are impacting on headline inflation across the world. mauritius does not stand immune to these developments. being a net food importer, the high food bill is already impacting on our current account. in addition, over half of the domestic inflation rate results from food inflation. the situation which we are facing is not unique to mauritius. other economies are also witnessing this phenomenon. in such an environment, it is vital that all economic players in our economy tune in their concerted efforts and it is expected that the gains from the recent appreciation of the mauritian rupee be fully passed on to consumers. as you are aware, we have since november 2007 been purchasing a large amount of foreign currencies on the domestic foreign exchange market. simultaneously we have been issuing our own instruments, bom bills, to sterilise the rupee counterparts. you will realise that these foreign currencies are invested abroad at interest rates currently prevailing on international markets. the bom bills are issued at a much higher rate. recently some enterprises have been complaining of lesser profits being realised. we, at the bank of mauritius, are very much concerned about the performance of the enterprises operating in the real sector. you will recollect our first meeting with mauritius export association ( mexa ) in the first week of january 2008 where in an attempt to help those enterprises, we offered to buy foreign exchange from them. we had a second meeting with them in the first week of april 2008 and we reiterated our support. our decision to reduce the key repo rate at our last mpc meeting was also, to some extent, to alleviate the costs of funds of exporting enterprises. it may be reminded that all our foreign transactions are not denominated in one currency only. we also gain when we deal in a currency which is depreciating vis - a - vis the rupee. with the restructure and re - engineering which has taken place at the bank, the bank is now more apt to meet those challenges. we thank you very much indeed for your presence this morning and wish you a very pleasant stay

grade corporate issuers relative to treasury securities increased by about 2. 5 percentage points in the first half of march, while issuance for companies rated below investment grade came to a halt. in this context, the primary market corporate credit facility ( pmccf ) was designed to provide funding for highly rated companies that need access to financing in order to maintain business operations during this period of dislocation. again with backing from the u. s. treasury, the federal reserve will create a funding vehicle to backstop eligible corporate borrowers for up to four years, at an interest rate that is better aligned with corporates ’ underlying credit risk than was available through market - based financing during march. this funding can be provided by the pmccf either through purchases of eligible corporate bonds as the sole investor at issuance, or from purchases of portions of syndications at issuance. the secondary market corporate credit facility ( smccf ), also backed by the u. s. treasury with funding from the federal reserve, will play an important complementary role to the pmccf. here again, there will be two mechanisms at work : the smccf may either purchase eligible corporate bonds with a remaining maturity of 5 years or less, or it can purchase u. s. - listed etfs. for etfs, the preponderance of holdings will be of etfs whose primary investment objective is exposure to u. s. investment - grade corporate bonds, and the remainder will be in etfs whose primary investment objective is exposure to u. s. high - yield corporate bonds. taken together, the corporate credit facilities will have three main objectives when we go live in the coming weeks : first, to provide broad support for market functioning in secondary markets to allow for orderly and timely risk transfer in corporate credit ; second, to support primary issuance for businesses at funding costs that better reflect normal liquidity conditions ; and third, to reduce the incidence and severity of fire sales and / or indiscriminate liquidation. municipal liquidity facility the last facility i ’ ll mention today is the municipal liquidity facility, which was designed to help 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches provide states, cities and counties with the funding needed to provide essential public services to their citizens. due to the virus outbreak, the municipal securities market has recently been under considerable strain as investors have become reluctant to purchase municipal securities. as a result, interest rates on municipal securities have increased significantly. at the same time, states