funds ; 2. may get you a lower cost of funds ; 3. may avoid fees and charges ; and 4. equity funding does not fetch interest costs ; mind you there are also risks to using the capital market and i am sure that you will cover these issues in detail in your sessions today. i hope that i have given you a flavour of what the capital market can do for you. let us get back to the question : how does all these support investment and economic growth? there are basically two ways : 1. one, it may encourage more savings. fiji savings rate is very low. if we remove the mandatory savings through fnpf, our saving rate is even lower. for investment to happen, we need to generate more savings. successful countries are normally associated with higher savings rate ; and 2. two, it directly promotes more investment by giving the one borrowing the money alternative sources of funds. with diversified sources of funds, more investors can emerge or more investments are made thus taking us towards the target of 25 percent of gdp. development of the capital market it is therefore extremely important that we develop the capital market in fiji. i must say that we have come a long way since the establishment of the cmda. i was very much involved in the establishment of the authority as the groundwork was done at the reserve bank. i can remember some of the ground breaking decisions that were taken then. they have begun to bear fruit. of course, one of the key roles of the authority is to regulate the market to ensure that everyone plays by the rule. the underlying aim is to protect the investors ’ interest. this is very important. confidence in the operation of the market is critical to people like you using the market. a lot has been achieved over the years in this regulatory area. i recall that one of the other major roles that we identified the authority to have was to develop the market. that was why the word “ development ” was specifically included in the name of the authority. how can one supervise a market that was not there in the first place? this meant that the cmda had to strike the right balance between regulation and development. i said that the market has developed in the last fifteen years. but i still have a sense that we still have some way to go. the challenge therefore is to take stock and re - examine our route. are there constraints that we still need to overcome? if so how can we do that and who should do it? i recall some

stress testing came with its integration with the federal reserve ’ s comprehensive capital analysis and review ( ccar ), beginning in 2011. one big change from the initial scap test was that stress tests were no longer a one - time emergency measure 2 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches intended to restore confidence in major financial institutions. instead, they became a recurring, ongoing process intended to maintain confidence in major institutions. second, stress tests were no longer a discretionary exercise by supervisors — under dodd - frank, they became the law of the land. and third, when they were integrated into ccar, stress tests became part of a comprehensive — it ’ s the first c in ccar — framework for capital planning that more closely connected capital regulation to risk management of banks and overall supervision. these were changes, but with the effect of reinforcing the founding principles of the scap test. transparency was enhanced when stress tests became mandatory, recurring events and the public could depend on continuing to have access to information about banks ’ capital adequacy. also, the independence of those judgments was enhanced when congress made them a statutory responsibility for the fed and when they were integrated into our ccar framework. further changes to stress testing have likewise reinforced the original goals. stress testing scenarios have become richer and more challenging, providing more information about how banks would deal with a range of adverse developments and, for example, exploring the effects of more differentiated risks that are not tied to the business cycle. large trading banks now face an instantaneous shock to their trading assets, and many participants in the stress tests now must address how they would respond to the failure of their largest counterparty. our stress tests demonstrate that banks have now built enough capital to withstand a severe recession. the capital - building phase of the post - crisis era is now complete, but as part of ccar, stress testing continues to contribute to the significant and ongoing improvement since 2009 in risk management by banks. the original reason for the qualitative objection aspect of stress testing was to provide incentives for banks to address the risk - management shortcomings that the federal reserve had observed during the financial crisis. for example, many firms supervised by the federal reserve had substantial deficiencies in their ability to measure, monitor, and manage their risks. these shortcomings made it difficult for banks to accurately report their risk exposures to the board, and consequently, threatened to undermine the credibility of the stress tests, which were, and remain, dependent on data