, and will not entail a large sell - off on our part. instead, the effect will be merely a temporary drop in our purchases of european assets. under the new principle, the fund will still be overweight in european assets, compared to a market neutral position. lessons from the crisis the high equity share, the capacity to increase the risk level in certain periods and the need for diversification are derived from the fund ’ s characteristics. let me now review some of the lessons from the financial crisis that have also shaped the development of the fund ’ s strategy. these changes are closer to the centre of the european debt crisis. the risk tolerance of the fund is to a large degree defined by the strategic equity share, which, as i mentioned, is 60 per cent. since the fund is heavily exposed to risk by virtue of its relatively high equity share, the function of government bonds is in essence to reduce the overall volatility of the portfolio. from this perspective, the most important role for government bonds is to hedge the equity portfolio. the hedge is best achieved by holding liquid government bonds with high credit quality. typically, this entails an overweight of the safest, low - yield government bonds. conversely, high - yield government bonds are more volatile, and thus they do not serve the overall purpose as a hedge in a global portfolio. bis central bankers ’ speeches slide 14 : fixed income : new benchmark the fund ’ s benchmark index for bonds is divided into 70 percent public and 30 percent corporate debt. previously, the allocation in the bond portfolio was based on market weights, and thus the portfolio was allocated in proportion to volume of the sovereign debt issued by each country. this resulted in rising allocation to the bonds of countries with increasing debt. the risk linked to this strategy became clear in the wake of the financial crisis. a reallocation of government debt on the basis of gdp weights will reduce this risk. moreover, we have started investing in government debt issued by emerging countries. the consequence of this is a reduction in the fund ’ s european holdings. increased demand for the safest government bonds may be regarded as an adjustment to the climate of high spreads and volatility that we have witnessed in recent years. in a market environment characterised by general uncertainty, market expectations might cause a slight increase in risk premiums to mount rapidly, unless the underlying cause of the increased risk premiums is dealt with by the relevant authorities. to sum up : a downweighting of

facilitate the collection and dissemination of information. in trinidad and tobago, however, our data compilation system is still largely based on manual forms when web - based forms would improve the speed of data collection and dissemination. we also need to change the culture towards the provision of statistical information. it needs to start with government agencies and state enterprises that tend to see the compilation of records in a way that facilitates analysis, as a bother. the private sector also needs to recognize that there is value in providing data even if it may imply a slight inconvenience. the private sector should be assured that accepted statistical standards require that data on individual firms are not published individually in order to protect confidentiality. the launch by cmmb of a composite leading indicator ( cmmb cli ) is an important development, in that it provides a flash estimate of current economic trends. the indicator should be easily understood as it is based on a set of readily available series. the indicator could, in principle, be very useful for analysts, investors and businessmen alike, and would give an additional piece of information to the central bank on which to base monetary policy decisions. that cmmb, as a private sector institution, has moved to fill this important need ; this is a positive development. it underscores the fact that the business of developing statistical information is not only for the cso or the central bank but is a responsibility of all economic stakeholders. i call on trade associations and industry groups to follow the example. let me again congratulate cmmb on this worthwhile initiative. you have established a new standard among private financial institutions in terms of the provision of timely and relevant information for decision making. additional efforts like these would go a long way to strengthening the country ’ s statistical infrastructure.