maintaining a capacity to trace and remedy faults. the ultimate purpose of the riksbank ’ s role as overseer of financial stability is to prevent both conventional and financial crises in the financial system. in concrete terms, the work entails following developments in the financial sector in the short term, primarily in the major banks, and working with structural changes, crisis management and regulation. an important part of the riksbank ’ s work in this field concerns cooperation with other authorities and companies in the financial sector. the importance of cooperation between authorities and private agents there is considerable common interest in creating resilience in the financial sector, which is based on the agents ’ dependence on one another. the entire system is dependent on the general public having confidence in the payment system as a whole. cooperation between the agents in the financial markets is necessary to find joint solutions and to be able to benefit from economies of scale. moreover, it is important to ensure joint basic conditions, such as access to electricity, telecommunications, fuel and water. the riksbank has actively conducted discussions in various contexts for some years now to disseminate information on how the payment system functions and how individual agents ’ attitudes to business continuity and crisis recovery planning affect the system as a whole. these discussions have mainly been conducted in three contexts. one of them is the cooperation for economic security ( soes ), which is called together by the swedish emergency management agency and where the participants include the riksbank, finansinspektionen ( the swedish financial supervisory authority ), the swedish social insurance administration and the national labour market board. another is the financial sector ’ s private - public sector cooperation body ( fspos ) that is called together by finansinspektionen and consists of representatives of the riksbank, finansinspektionen, the swedish bankers ’ association, independent savings banks, securities companies and insurance companies. the third discussion forum i would like to mention is the reference group for the payment system called together by the riksbank and consisting of representatives from vpc ab, bankgirocentralen, stockholm stock exchange, the major banks and the swedish bankers ’ association. part of the work in these working groups has entailed charting the flows and the infrastructure of the payment system. the charting process began as an internal project at the riksbank, with a general review of the payment system ’ s basic conditions, agents and services. this has since functioned as a basis

the normative effect of the first agreements remains uncertain. among other circumstances, it will depend on the level of coordination of negotiations between employers and employees. another problem was that teknikforetagen, an employers ’ organisation in the engineering industry, revoked the industrial agreement last year. the industrial agreement is an important reason that wage formation has worked so well since the mid - 1990s. the revocation of this agreement by one of the signatories meant that the future of the agreement became uncertain. this has been sorted out now, with a new proposed industrial agreement having been accepted by all parties except the swedish paper workers ’ union. i view the new industrial agreement as a success. it cements the principle that the parts of the business sector that are exposed to international competition should play a normative role in wage bargaining and gives the impartial chairmen a stronger role in the coordination within the manufacturing sector. it is thus positive that there is a new industrial agreement. but there is reason to remind ourselves of our experiences from the wage bargaining rounds in 1995. the coordination of the demands from the swedish trade union confederation failed in these wage bargaining rounds. the swedish paper workers ’ union and the employers ’ federation of swedish forest industries were first out then, and concluded a relatively high agreement that set the level for a large part of the labour market. the result of this was wage increases of over 5 per cent in the years 1996 and 1997, levels which were altogether too high in relation to the inflation target and the weak employment situation. the economic conditions for wage formation in the years ahead i will now briefly present the riksbank ’ s assessment of economic development in recent years. i will refer to the most recently published forecast from april. of course, quite a lot has happened since then, but, at the same time, two months later you don ’ t normally know a great deal more about developments two to three years ahead. in any event, we will be publishing an updated assessment in the monetary policy report in july. the international recovery is proceeding at a good rate for the world as a whole, we expect to see a gdp growth of over 4 per cent per year for the next three years. this is a high growth rate from an historical perspective ( see figure 4 ). but bis central bankers ’ speeches developments across the world are divided, with weaker growth taking place in the developed economies and stronger growth in emerging economies. the recovery of the united states and europe is continuing at a fairly