doing whatever they wish. this, of course, applies to many other things that we do not allow banks to do and the answer really is that we still wish to see “ banks doing other services ”, rather than “ other businesses also offering banking services ”. this is because banks are critical organs of an economy and they should be separately supervised and examined such that they are safer than other activities which might be allowed to fail more easily. virtual banking, defined as banking without counter services, is still not allowed. the only thing that we have decided in this new and expanding area of the economy is that if the e - commerce service takes deposits, a banking license must be sought before the services could be offered. but like many things in life, it is not where you are, but how fast you are going, how fast you are catching up that is more important, and in this respect we are working assiduously to formulate the new rules so that we can join the leaders in the change to the new economy - new rules with the reliability that is always so necessary in any kind of good banking. in summary on our financial institutions ’ developments, they are going ahead very fast and they will have good rules to perform to, but i must admit we are coming from way off, and have a long way to go before we are competitive in our own country let alone abroad. ladies and gentlemen, so far i have talked at some length about the macroeconomy, good governance and developments in our financial institutions. even if all the things i have outlined about thailand were to happen, many people think that the economy would still be prone to instability unless the central bank is also revitalized. i am inclined to agree with them. for some reasons not yet identifiable, and that worries me because a good change normally only can happen when the problems have been clearly identified. but in any case, there were signs that the bank of thailand somehow has been sidetracked into the crony capitalism of the rest of the economy, a development whose job it is of the central bank to try and prevent. it was obvious therefore that the bank of thailand had to be restructured into an organization that would be effective and neutral. extensive work was therefore done employing re - engineering concepts using consultants as necessary. the six management levels have now been reduced to two, with people of different capabilities at the second tier depending on the importance of their work. at the operating level, there are also only two levels

, or soon after i get back, the disposal of all intervened banks will be complete. in terms of bad clients, since on the afternoon i left for the annual meetings of the world bank and imf, the contract for the transfer into the government - run asset management company of some 12 billion dollars of assets was signed and the cabinet had also approved the covered asset pool arrangement for another intervened bank for a further 5 billion dollars. i expect that the npl at the end of this year will be in the teens - a quite manageable level compared to the high of 48 % at the beginning of the year. on the average, banks are now back into the positive spread, actually of 1. 28 % last month, which is low by traditional standards and still not profitable but still over half of the spread that we expect banks to be operating in under the new competitive and transparent conditions that we will see in the future. in this respect, banks are now allowed to close branches freely and also are free to decide opening and closing hours. we are working on the rules on the free opening of branches, being quite far ahead in this, and we expect to announce it, certainly within the next two to three months, whereby lending conditions tied to branch opening are probably going to be removed. this initiative is undertaken under the concept that banking services coverage is now adequate and we need not force banks any longer to do things for social reasons. competition between service providers will probably lead to better results than government directed banking. we have now also agreed on the rules for internet banking, defined as the traditional counter service banking using e - commerce technology. our idea is simple in that what could be done over the counter will be allowed over the internet. the similarity in service even goes so far as that we will not allow pro - active selling in the internet but that it must be passive in the same way that we require that selling of non - banking services over bank counters must be passive. in terms of e - commerce, what that means is that logos of non - bank service suppliers in the bank ’ s web must not be on the main page. transactions with the suppliers must be done by transferring into the supplier ’ s web rather than on the bank ’ s web services and, of course, the bank ’ s client, must log in. the banks may not push their services onto their clients ’ computers. a lot of our advisors asked why banks cannot behave in the way of best interest to the bank,