at which banks don ’ t lend to each other. bank funding markets have changed enormously. banks no longer take sufficient short - term wholesale deposits to form the basis for a robust transaction - based libor benchmark. as a result libor is overly reliant on expert judgement rather than actual transactions. and global markets remain overly reliant on libor, a benchmark that may not exist beyond 2021. that reliance is neither desirable nor sustainable. that ’ s why authorities internationally have worked with market participants to identify alternative benchmarks based on actual transactions. these are overnight rates – a relatively pure read on risk - free rates in each economy. in sterling, the market has chosen sonia, a benchmark now administered by the bank of england. in april we implemented reforms to sonia that boosted the volume of transactions captured by a factor of three to £50bn per day. these areas are : the role that ‘ cover and deal ’ and similar trading models play in the fx market ; how market participants adjust their pricing on e - trading platforms and when trading by voice ; and, disclosures regarding last look practices. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches the focus now is on transition. market participants in every sector and market that use libor now need to come together to identify and resolve issues, change business practices, and adopt alternative benchmarks. in sterling, over 90 institutions, including banks, law firms, corporates, asset managers, trade associations and infrastructure firms, are directly involved in this effort supported by the bank and fca. transition to sonia will bring a number of benefits. market participants can have the confidence that sonia faithfully represents conditions in a deep underlying market. they can also be assured that sonia ’ s design is robust to future changes in money markets because, if necessary, sonia ’ s data inputs can evolve. near risk - free rates like sonia are a better reflection of the general level of interest rates than libor – which is affected by fluctuations in the perceived credit quality of banks ( as well as other technical factors as seen recently ). interest payments for benchmark users should be less volatile as a result, especially in times of stress, and products referencing sonia should provide a better hedge for duration risk. over time the private sector will develop a wider range of products referencing sonia. futures contracts have already been created. we can expect floating rate notes and loans referencing sonia to follow. the end point should be an

, but as a measure of the extent to which the growth of demand is held consistently broadly in line with the underlying - sustainable - growth of supply - side capacity. the past ten years have in fact been a period of unusual stability in that broader sense for the uk economy as a whole. inflation has been consistently low throughout that time - close to, and recently modestly below, our present 2½ % target. but that has not been achieved at the expense of consistently high interest rates, and weak growth and high unemployment, as many people initially feared that it would. in fact nominal interest rates have been as low as most of us can ever remember ; the overall economy has grown consistently for 40 successive quarters without interruption at an average annual rate of some 2¾ %, which is comfortably above its long - term trend ; and the number of people in employment has risen fairly steadily to close to an all - time high, while the rate of unemployment has fallen to a more than 25 - year low. the overall picture is much the same for the west midlands region. i don't have regional data for real economic growth, but using the deflator for the uk economy, your region grew from 1992 to 1999, at an annual average rate of 2. 7 % - very close to the rate for the uk as a whole. the number of people in employment in the region has also increased, with the employment rate now close to a 10 year high and in line with - in fact marginally above - the average for the uk of 74. 6 %. and the rate of unemployment - on the claimant count basis - at 3. 5 % is very close to its 25 year low. that's still a bit above the uk average rate, of 3. 1 % but it's very much better than the 10 % rate of a decade ago. now i know it hasn't felt like that for everyone - particularly for internationally exposed businesses and their employees and for the regions in which such businesses are more heavily concentrated including the west midlands with its relatively high concentration of manufacturing businesses. i am well aware that many of them - perhaps many of you - have been having a rough time over the past few years. although the uk economy as a whole managed to avoid recession, uk manufacturing output fell from a peak nearly two years ago by around 7 % and employment in uk manufacturing fell by 225, 000 people, or some 6 %. to put that into perspective, manufacturing output fell from