a robust, secure and sustainable financial ecosystem for cyprus. 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches let me now update you on another initiative we actioned at the central bank of cyprus. in our effort to promote the digitalisation of the financial sector, to create an efficient financial ecosystem and to support the economy, the central bank of cyprus issued a tender for the implementation of a remote, digital on - boarding platform for the banking sector. the tender has been completed and we will announce the result in the next few days. the digital platform will be implemented in three phases and will progressively bring benefits to individual and corporates, such as reducing the time to on - board clients, reducing the time needed for their bank transactions and upgrading the quality of service they receive. this will be achieved through each phase as follows : phase 1 is the implementation of the technology for the sector to remotely on - board new customers and remotely update existing customer records via a digitalised process. the digitalization will provide an optimised user - friendly interface without the need for physical presence, which will be customisable by each participating financial institution, in accordance to their needs and customer assessment requirements. the following phases will be : - connectivity and interoperability with utilities, such as electricity and water, and governmental services to obtain accurate customer data for verification purposes, thus speeding up the know your customer ( kyc ) process and ensuring the integrity of data entries, and - information sharing between participating institutions when there is an update of customers'data for anti money laundering ( aml ) / kyc compliance purposes or for account opening, which will reduce the need for further engaging the customer in the process, since the customer would have already been on - boarded. this digital platform will improve the efficiency and openness of banking services, while adhering to relevant european regulations for on - boarding clients. we made sure of that. it will create a comparative advantage for the cyprus banking system. although at first the digital platform will be implemented in the banking sector, my intention is to subsequently scale it to other entities regulated by the central bank of cyprus, such as the payment institutions and electronic money institutions. adoption will continue to be voluntary for each institution. ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing transformative challenges due to digitalisation and innovation. in order to address these, the eurosystem is taking a multi - dimensional approach, by first, promoting instant payments as the'new norm ', and second, by investigating the possible introduction

most observers don ’ t expect iron ore prices to be sustained at current high levels. residential construction has been a key source of demand for steel in the chinese economy. it currently accounts for around 15 per cent of total steel use. by our estimates, the quantity of steel used in residential construction has roughly doubled over the past eight years. this has been driven by urbanisation and rising incomes, which in turn drive the demand for newer, larger and higher - quality buildings. while we would not expect growth to continue at such a rapid rate, steel use from this sector is not expected to peak for some years. of course, we should not overlook other sources of demand for steel. an obvious one is the expansion in rail networks. the demand for steel for this purpose looks likely to continue to grow strongly, with much work yet to be done to develop rail links both between and within cities. indeed, the ministry of railways plans to increase spending in 2013, and maintain this at high levels in 2014 and 2015. this is but one example of the still considerable scope for china to add to its infrastructure, which underpins a range of forecasts for chinese steel production to continue to grow for another decade and a half. 5 in short, with a lower rate of trend economic growth, chinese demand for commodities will grow somewhat less rapidly than in the past. but the expectation is that it will still grow strongly for quite some time. and because the chinese economy is so much larger now, even a somewhat slower rate of growth represents a large quantity of new demand for raw materials. to help understand the importance of this point, it is worth looking at the example of steel production, which increased by about 9 per cent in 2011. this was equivalent to an extra 58 mt of steel output. in 2004, the much higher growth rate of about 23 per cent was equivalent to only 50 mt of extra output. the outlook for mining investment in australia despite the potential for further growth in the demand for commodities, from china and other developing economies, we expect commodity prices to gradually decline over the next few years. this reflects the extra supply generated by the substantial amount of mining investment underway in australia, and elsewhere. nevertheless, commodity prices are expected to remain at what are historically high levels for a considerable period. the very high price for bulk commodities has helped to drive mining investment in australia to around 8 per cent of gdp currently, some four times larger than its long - run average. this has led to a significant increase in