an opinion that a transaction is not permissible, it has to do so in writing and giving reasons. 10. let me go back to the preamble of fema. as we have seen an important part of the objective of fema is to facilitate trade and payments. with current account fully convertible, almost entire focus of the regulatory framework under fema is on the capital account transactions. the question then is this. is the regulatory framework that faces an economic agent or a market participant – be it an investor or an investee, a lender or a borrower – conducive enough to facilitate various capital account transactions? lest i am misunderstood, let me clarify that i am not advocating a greater degree of capital account openness or being more permissive in respect of this or that class of capital account transactions. the pace of capital account liberalisation will be dictated by a host of factors including macroeconomic conditions, financial stability issues and so on. my limited point is that once the policy framework has been spelt out, the implementation has to be such that anyone – a resident or more importantly a non - resident – contemplating a capital account transaction knows clearly and unambiguously what can be done, how it can be done and within what timeframe it can be done. i do not think we have succeeded too well in this objective, at least not as much as we should have. let me elaborate. 11. let us start with the regulatory framework. excluding the 26 original notifications containing regulations pertaining to mostly capital account transactions, there have been a total of 263 notifications amending the regulations originally made or subsequently amended. another dozen or so amendments are in the pipeline. after fema was introduced, the number of directives issued to the “ authorised persons ” was 36 in 2001 – 02 ; it had increased to 138 during 2011 – 12, 122 during 2012 – 13 and as many as 77 in less than 5 months in the current year. the two gigantic volumes of taxman ’ s exchange management manual – in small and close prints – look as formidable as any elaborate commentary on the most complex law. indeed, it will not surprise me if someone points out an inconsistency or contradiction between two different directions or notifications. so have we simplified or complicated? is it time for a comprehensive review? to my mind, it is an emphatic yes. 12. an important factor in this context is that capital account management has often been used as an instrument

decelerating wages. the downturn of salaried employment has been echoed by a rise in self - employment. as we show in a box in the mp report, considering workers of equal experience and skills, a person that is self - employed or works in the informal sector, earns around 20 % less per hour than a salaried employee. if we consider that the informal and self - employed work fewer hours per week, their income ends up being 30 % to 40 % less. although the share of non - salaried employment in total employment has risen in the past few months, it has not diverted far from its historic indicators. actually, the figure for the last moving quarter, february to april 2017 ( 25. 9 % ) is a perfect match to the 2010 - 2017 average and significantly lower than the average from 1986 ( 27 % ) and of periods of economic crises ( figure 6 ). thus, the increase in self - employment has cushioned the decay of the labor market ’ s impact on the wage mass. the reduction of inflation has also helped, leading the wage mass to grow a little above the forecast, returning to a range between 2. 5 % and 3 % annually. however, as detailed in the fs report of the first half 2017, the evolution of the labor market may be influencing the repayment behavior of households, which has seen some deterioration recently. all in all, we foresee that total, private and public, consumption will grow around 2. 5 % this year and 3 % next year. another determinant of consumption, such as credit cost, shows that cuts to the monetary policy rate ( mpr ) have been passing through to the interest rates. beyond specific fluctuations due to composition effects, interest rates on consumer, commercial and mortgage loans are in low levels ( figure 7 ). despite some marginal improvement, credit growth remains tight, with supply - side and demand - side constraints combined. the former matter more for consumer and mortgage loans, in particular because of the higher risk associated to the labor market and the increase in some delinquency indicators, plus the effects of regulatory changes in the real - estate market. demand - side factor are especially important for companies, which attribute their low demand for credit to the shortage of investment projects ( figure 8 ). considering the usual revision to the growth projection range for the current year that we must do in this mp report, the board estimates that gdp will expand between 1 % and 1.