of public works contracted in the donan area has recently picked up as well. on the other hand, domestic private demand, namely, business fixed investment and private consumption, has continued to weaken amid persisting sluggishness in corporate profits and the worsening employment and income situation. looking at the june tankan ( short - term economic survey of enterprises in japan ) released earlier this month, firms'fixed investment plans for fiscal 2009 decreased by almost 20 percent year on year. regarding private consumption, sales of electrical appliances have increased and the number of new passenger - car registrations has recently picked up. however, sales at department stores and supermarkets have continued to be on a declining trend. outlays for travel have also continued to decline. as these developments show, a sharp drop in exports since last autumn and the subsequent decrease in production have started to adversely affect domestic private demand with a lag. at present, a recovery in exports and production and the weakness in business fixed investment and private consumption seem to be in a tug of war. b. the outlook for japan's economy i would now like to move on to the outlook for japan's economy. as i mentioned earlier, there are currently both upward and downward pressures in japan's economy. regarding which will prevail, the bank's baseline scenario projects that the upward pressure will outweigh the downward, leading the economy to start recovering from the latter half of fiscal 2009. global financial markets are expected to regain stability and overseas economies to start to recover, and in japan the aggressive fiscal and monetary policy measures are likely to have positive effects. in addition to an increase in exports, business fixed investment and private consumption are therefore expected to be on a gradual recovery path. stock prices have continued to fluctuate, but appear to have picked up from the sluggishness observed some time ago. the nikkei 225 stock average has recently been around 9, 500 yen, up by more than 30 percent compared with early march when it recorded the lowest level since the bursting of the bubble. according to the economic watchers survey and consumer confidence survey, the pessimism of firms and households regarding economic conditions has subsided since this spring. the june tankan also showed that business sentiment, especially of manufacturing firms, has stopped deteriorating. these survey results seem to basically reflect recent signs of a leveling out of the economy and expectations of positive effects from various policy measures. nevertheless, the question whether the degree of improvement in

paper form but also its electronic form. government agencies from singapore are working with the chongqing port and logistics office to conduct a pilot to digitalise bills of lading, including the mtbl, using tradetrust. tradetrust is an interoperable framework to support the exchange of electronic documents. it uses distributed ledger technology to allow trade actors to establish the authenticity of a digital document. if we can scale the use of tradetrust within the cci - ilstc, banks will be able to use these electronic documents for trade financing and we can effectively eliminate the risk of 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches fraudulent mtbls. more broadly, the greater use of electronic trade documents will make verification checks easier, reduce the incidence of fraud and human error, and ultimately lower costs. but to achieve this, all stakeholders need to adopt digital tools and upgrade their trade practices. we need close collaboration among government agencies and private sector players. there are promising signs of progress. root ant, a singapore fintech firm has signed an agreement with the bank of china ( boc ) to serve as the trade financing platform on the singapore side, enabling traders, logistics companies, and boc ’ s branches to exchange electronic trade documents under the cciilstc for trade financing purposes. i look forward to more of such digital trade pilots bearing fruit over the next couple of years. collectively, these will transform how trade is conducted on the cci - ilstc. our second focus area is green finance. china and asean will require significant green financing to make our transition to a more sustainable future. it is estimated that to achieve carbon neutrality, china will require more than 500 trillion rmb or us $ 78 trillion in green and low carbon investments over the next 30 years. asean will require some us $ 2 trillion in green investments over the next 10 years. as an international financial centre, singapore has made serving asia ’ s transition towards sustainability through green finance a key priority. singapore can play an important role in supporting china ’ s green financing needs. there is a deep green financing and investor pool based in singapore looking for green assets in asia. during 2017 to 2020, domestic and foreign corporates have successfully issued us $ 8 billion of green, social and sustainability linked bonds in singapore. how can singapore and chongqing work together to mobilise green financing and investments in a safe, sound, and orderly manner? let me offer four suggestions. first, we must help corporates understand the value of green