agree that the root cause of the crisis lies beneath excessively accommodative monetary policy that led to excessive credits, and in turn, to asset price bubbles, a repeating cause of past crises. other important driving factors behind rising credit expansion and bubbles included rising financial innovation and its complexity and lax supervision. the global financial imbalances could not have heightened rapidly since the early 2000s without fast rising global economic integration. both global trade and financial integration aided the growing us domestic consumption as well as the twin deficits of the current and fiscal accounts. trade integration facilitated exports especially from asia to meet the us demand. on the other hand, increasing financial integration allowed emerging economies with fast rising export revenues to invest the money in the us market where there is a wide variety of financial assets and instruments. at the same time, financial institutions in most advanced economies and a number of emerging economies have invested in opaque financial products, which originated in the us and spread globally through financial integration. therefore, with economic integration at the global level, the large global savinginvestment mismatches between the us, who is a net spender, and emerging market asia and others, who are net savers, were allowed to persist for a continued period. in addition, with global financial integration, what was originally expected to be a us problem once imbalances unwind, has turned into a global crisis. ladies and gentlemen, one common and frequently asked question is whether further integration at both the global and regional levels, especially financial integration, should be deterred as it has created channels that allow a financial crisis in one country to spread to various parts of the world. i believe that, like all economic matters, integration offers benefits and comes with costs. while we see significant adverse impacts of global integration, asian economic integration, in fact, has a crucial role in helping a number of our regional economies withstand this enormous external destabilizing shock. hence, our essential tasks are about determining an appropriate pace of further integration and making us increasingly resilient in response to the fast changing environment. to elaborate the above points, allow me to briefly talk about the developments of asian economic integration with the world and within the region. on the trade side, there are two important on - going forces. first, international trade with the economies outside the region has risen significantly especially due to the emergence of china and india in the world trade arena, as well as policies to lower trade barriers and establish trade agreements. second, within

and simple principles and beliefs of the grameen bank ’ s success story that have defied the conventional commercial thinking over the years are : institutions create poverty and not the poor ; poverty cannot be eradicated by charity ; no difference in the ability of the poor person and any other person ; understanding the needs of the poor and designing of the credit delivery system accordingly ; trust and firm belief that poor people will pay - back ; and finally lending to women brings greater benefit and maximises the uses of limited resources. more simply put, grameen philosophy centered on the theme of promoting credit as a human right. this philosophy, combined into action on the ground, delivered grameen bank where it is today. as the famous saying goes, fine words and intentions are not enough until and unless they are transformed into action. but of course, we know now, that microfinance is more than just provision of microcredit. microfinance is intertwined with access and provision of credit, basic banking services and also provision of insurance services and financial literacy. the development of microfinance : experience of fiji let me now share with you our experiences in fiji. i intend to first provide an analysis of microfinance in fiji and outline the major challenges facing us. finally, i will elaborate a little on the role of the reserve bank of fiji in promoting microfinance in fiji. the first microfinance initiative was established by the ministry of women, social welfare and poverty alleviation in 1993. i believe this was done with the assistance of nz aid. this initiative was based on the grameen bank model. soon after, we saw the establishment of two new private initiatives – seeds and anandpur. seeds ( abbreviated for social and economic equity for the disadvantaged ) and anandpur were community based microfinance institutes that received technical assistance and funding from the national microfinance unit, the udnp, ministry of women and ba rotary club. in the early 1990s, the reserve bank of fiji started taking an interest in examining how best to develop and promote microfinance nationwide. first, we provided awareness to our staff by sending them to international conferences and also to visit countries with successful microfinance schemes. i also personally benefited through such awareness trips to some asian countries and saw firsthand the role the governments, private sector and ngos played in the promotion and development of microfinance. recognising that we needed to have a national strategy, the reserve bank of fiji conducted a national survey on