some more substantive questions as to whether we need to maintain the currently existing arrangements and, if so, in what form. we expect to complete the consultation on those questions and reach conclusions later in the year. bis central bankers ’ speeches the fourth issue on which we are currently consulting is retail payments system resilience. much of the work of the payments system board over the years has been in regulation and oversight of what we might call self - contained systems : things like a credit card network, or a clearing and settlement facility. but the board ’ s remit extends more broadly to the efficiency and stability of the payments system as a whole. on any common sense reading, the payments system encompasses the capacity of person a to make a payment to person b when they bank with different banks. the ability of the system as a whole to deliver that basic service, dependably and efficiently, clearly comes under the payments system board ’ s overall policy mandate. that is why it is appropriate for the board to be conducting the innovation review that i ’ ve just outlined. it relates to the efficiency of the system as a whole. it is also why it is appropriate for the board to take an interest in the operational resilience of individual payments service providers. in recent years there have been a number of high - profile outages affecting the availability of services to significant numbers of customers. obviously individual banks have a strong incentive to minimise the risk of these sorts of incidents. it affects their own reputation when something goes wrong and it impairs their ability to meet the needs of their customers. but there is also a system - wide dimension to these problems. all participants in the system, and all users of payments services, have an interest in high standards being maintained across the system as a whole, not just their own component of it. when bank a ’ s systems go down, customers of all the other banks are affected, because their capacity to exchange payments with customers of that bank is impaired. for some time the reserve bank has been monitoring significant retail payment outages, and following up with the relevant banks as to diagnosis and appropriate remedial actions. so in a sense, a role for the rba in this area is not new. what we are now proposing is to formalise that role in two ways. first, we have announced that we will be putting in place a more systematic reporting regime for retail outages. and second, we have begun a consultation process with the banks as to whether further

state, and i don ’ t think that i need to highlight the scope of the problem here. similarly, i think the effect on the economy of an energy shortage should be fairly straightforward : energy is one of the key inputs in any value - added production process. less energy availability will translate into lower output. the solutions to the energy problem will take time – unfortunately, there is no magic pill here. we will need to invest in infrastructure for hydro - electricity, natural gas transportation and transmission, and more efficient power plants. moreover, we will need to move to greater private sector participation in the energy sector. that means there will, once again, be a need for less, but more effective regulation – one that safeguards the rights of both producers and consumers, while ensuring adequate incentives for the exploitation of our natural resources the most important incentive here will be prices. unfortunately, a large part of our energy problems today can be traced to a mispricing of fuels. under - pricing any commodity will always lead to a shortage – that ’ s one of the fundamental axioms of economics. letting the market decide the price is one way of ensuring that future shortages are averted. but remember that markets do not have morals – and that ’ s why we will need regulation to make sure that those markets serve and protect the interests of all stakeholders. at this point, i would also like to touch very briefly upon the state bank ’ s efforts to accelerate economic growth. as you may know, any central bank ’ s primary policy tool is the discount rate – the basic interest rate which acts as an anchor for all other rates in the economy. unlike most central banks, and similar to the us federal reserve, the state bank has a dual mandate : it must tackle the issue of maintaining price stability, i. e. inflation, while also keeping an eye on economic growth. the preamble to the sbp act of 1956 defines that the institution has “ to regulate the monetary and credit system of pakistan and to foster its growth in the best national interest with a view to securing monetary stability and fuller bis central bankers ’ speeches utilization of the country ’ s productive resources ”. so at the state bank, we need to pay close attention to both monetary stability and fuller utilization of the country ’ s resources. that is a tough balance to strike in the best of times. the bank ’ s policy is to use any room available to cut interest rates in order to promote economic growth. after being in doubledig