mr stals talks about the international economic environment address by the governor of the south african reserve bank, dr chris stals, at the convention of the institute of life and pension advisers ( ilpa ) in johannesburg on april 12, 1999. 1. the international financial crises of 1997 / 98 the past eighteen months witnessed disrupting turbulences in world financial markets that led to the collapse in financial structures in many countries, and to a serious decline in economic growth in the world at large. a chronic weakness in the japanese economy over a prolonged period of time should perhaps be regarded as the major cause of the financial crisis, which is generally linked to the collapse of the economies of a number of countries in east asia. these included thailand, korea, the philippines, indonesia and malaysia - - countries that managed their economies with great success for many years. what went wrong in these countries is now part of history, and some consensus has been found on an ex post basis of the reasons for the collapse in the economies of what used to be referred to as the east asian tigers. in general, the following can be offered as a summary of mistakes that were made in the economic management of the afflicted countries : * governments failed to react timeously to overheating economies. this was manifested in unsustainable high levels of economic growth, inflated property and share prices, as well as large deficits on the current account of the balance of payments. * prolonged pegging of currencies to the united states dollar at unsustainable levels, making monetary policy less effective and making the exchange value of domestic currency appear to be guaranteed. this encouraged huge external borrowing, leading to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risks for borrowers in the public and in the private sectors. * insufficient supervision of financial institutions and poor enforcement of prudential rules, reinforced by cronyism. * lack of sufficient and accurate data to enable market players to make a correct assessment of economic fundamentals. * in the situation, international investors under - estimated risks as they searched for higher income yields. in particular, investors failed to grasp inevitable links between market ( liquidity ) risks and credit risks. * the expanding world financial market and lax controls over multi - national financial institutions encouraged excessive leveraging based on a relatively small capital base for hedge funds and certain banking institutions. * a herd - like reaction by international investors, once the bubble burst, that led to an almost panic - withdrawal of funds from economies that could not in a

), which offers clear benefits such as increased transparency page 2 sur 4 and interconnectedness. we look forward to shaping our construction accordingly, so that it remains state - of - the - art, fluid and consistent with its environment. central banks are therefore, one might say, also doubly in charge of ariadne ’ s thread, ensuring trust and creating new gateways so that anyone can find their way. everybody knows asia is tech - friendly, and that the monetary authority of singapore ( mas ) in particular is proactive in this regard. this is perhaps less known, but so are europe and france. i will illustrate this concretely by recalling what the banque de france and the eurosystem have done so far, and the projects that are in our pipeline today, many of which relate to exploratory work on central bank digital currencies ( cbdcs ). i will start with wholesale cbdc, where the banque de france has been a pioneer by conducting twelve experiments since november 2020. we have explored all identified use cases on all types of dlt ( public and private ), with a wide range of public and private partners. iii these experiments have shown that central banks will be able to steer the money supply of wholesale cbdc – which is essential to anchor the value of central bank money, and hence financial stability in the realm of tokenisation. we are testing various technologies in our experiments : we are improving our own dlt ( dl3s ), and in parallel we are exploring alternative protocols and blockchains – be they private or public. the banque de france is now also actively involved in the eurosystem exploratory work on the settlement of tokenised assets in central bank money, which was launched last april. iv with our dl3s technology, we are providing one of the three solutions that will be used over the course of 2024 in experiments and trials, the latter involving real transactions. the eurosystem has already published the envisaged eligibility criteria and a survey, v before a formal call for interest that will take place in the coming weeks, and will roll out the experiments and trials over the course of 2024. commercial banks and other financial actors will have a key role in the success of our exploratory work. in particular, i invite banks to take the opportunity of these experiments to explore page 3 sur 4 “ tokenised deposits ”, for which the bis has made a strong