to meet ongoing trade payments. also, bahamians who have accumulated foreign currency assets abroad will be permitted to repatriate these and, if they desire, maintain the deposits in foreign currency. the holders of these facilities will not be able to fund them with foreign exchange that is purchased on the local market. this ensures that inflows of foreign exchange remain for the most part available for the private sector ’ s current account needs. 4 | page a stable, sustainable path to further liberalisation it is the continued liberalisation of the capital account to which we should aspire in the bahamas, to the extent that it is able to stimulate higher rates of national savings and investment and provide more diversification opportunities for local investors. the proviso is that the flows, whether inward or outward, ought to be sustainable. we ought also to be able to maintain relative exchange rate and financial stability. the bahamas must be prepared to move in this direction only as fast as we are able to erect the appropriate safeguards around highly liquid capital flows. at the same time, we should strive to put such frameworks in place. compared to the present environment, the outcome for liberalisation could include the following : the ability of bahamians to invest outside the bahamas in foreign currency, absent the investment currency market premium ; and the ability of non - residents to invest more freely inside the bahamas in both long - term and short - term capital. the ability of residents to hold foreign currency deposits in local banks and for nonresidents to maintain deposits in local currency. the ability for residents to borrow in foreign currency and for non - residents to borrow in local currency, irrespective of source. these would, of course imply, no restrictions on converting into and out of bahamian dollars. to be sustainable, net capital inflows must be able to pay for themselves. that is, their deployment should generate enough foreign currency returns to repay both the initial inflows and the required returns on those flows. otherwise, they could become a net drain or burden on a country ’ s stock of foreign reserves. now, when the decision is left to banks, there should be less of a concern about whether financing of a particular currency 5 | page denomination should be given to a firm, because from a best practices or regulatory point of view, banks would be required to match their lending to the currency in which the revenues of the business are denominated. outside of banks and similarly regulated entities,

larger volumes of resources can be accumulated for such purposes. again, the outcome is likely to target savings in funds that are only accessible for lower cost financing after natural disasters. enhancing financial resilience through technology moving from households to financial institutions, technology will have to feature more prominently in our resilience and recovery plan. indeed the recovery of access to financial services is vital to restarting commercial activities. payments services have to be present for businesses to operate ; for the government and aid agencies to effectively dispense financial assistance, and even to make use of early payouts from insurance policies. at present, there is still too much dependence on cash handling services and therefore commerce is only able recover clumsily, when the physical support that banks provide is missing or hampered. fully accessible and enabled digital mobile payments would resolve many logistical challenges at once. project sand dollar has the potential to deliver this longer - term resilience. it would permit wireless restoration of payments connectively, avoiding the cash shipment and cash handling frustrations. it would permit electronic dispersing of aid ; and allow families to recapture personal dignity, by restoring the flexibility to prioritise the elements of personal need that they prefer to satisfy postdisasters. one of the impacts of the recent hurricane on the country ’ s banking sector was the significant damage to physical structures in abaco and grand bahama, which also shut down operations on those islands. critical to restoring a sense of commerce is the timely resumption of banking and payments systems. for this reason, the central bank is exploring an early entry of project sand dollar into abaco. it will allow the bank to test aspects of the emergency wireless communications features that would enable rapid financial services recovery ; and to connect with many retail businesses early in their recovery process. the sand dollar infrastructure is being designed to connect with bank accounts, so that remote access to these facilities is also quickly re - enabled for deposits and withdrawals. tourism sector resilience for the fixed - exchange rate regime i started to touch on the stability of our fixed exchange rate regime and the value of the bahamian dollar earlier. for the medium and longer - term this amounts to making the foreign exchange earning assets more resilient. hotels and other onshore accommodations are the bahamas ’ most valuable and most exposed assets. damages to abaco are most summarized by the extent to which these assets have been taken offline. in 2016, hurricane matthew similarly resulted in the loss of much of grand bahama