other services in the public interest. what caused the recent wave of banking reforms, what issues regulators still need to consider, and how are banks expected to respond on a global or national level? such questions will be discussed during the first panel of our conference by our renowned key speaker professor martin hellwig, director of the max planck institute for research on collective goods and vice - chair of the esrb advisory scientific committee, and by his distinguished discussant professor marek belka, president of the national bank of poland. later this morning we will focus on how the redesign of the regulatory framework impacts the central banks. the honourable general manager of the bank for international settlements, mr. jaime caruana, is our key speaker for the second panel. his presentation will be discussed by our highly respected colleague and long - time governor of the central bank of luxembourg, currently member of the executive board of the ecb, mr. yves mersch. they will talk about the new challenges in the governance and accountability of central banks, the compatibility of traditional and recently assumed goals, as well as about newly emerging reputational, communication or related issues. i also hope that mr. mersch will share with us bis central bankers ’ speeches some fresh observations on the single supervisory mechanism in the euro area, from an insider ’ s point of view. the discussions today will also be facilitated by our well - known colleagues professor boris vujcic, governor of the croatian national bank, and mr. kalin hristov, deputy governor of the bnb. dear colleagues, • before proceeding with the presentations and discussions today, let me share a few words on the experience of the bnb which provides examples, relevant for the topic of today ’ s conference. • we have seen that the compatibility of monetary, micro - and macro - prudential policies is possible in reality, and not only in theory. the bnb has successfully implemented such a policy mix for many years, during all stages of the economic cycles, before and during the recent global crisis. • we have also seen that it may take years and perhaps at least one serious financial or banking crisis, to design and then enforce central banking policies which are optimal for a country. in bulgaria the policymakers, legislators and the public at large came to the consensus of introducing the currency board regime and the very strict banking supervision and regulations. this happened only after our own deep financial and banking crisis which took place in the mid - 1990s. our experience has convinced us that

micro, small and medium sized enterprises. at this point, we have allowed banks to exceed their credit ceiling by over $ 185 million. as you know, the credit ceiling only applies to commercial banks. earlier in the year, we had discussed with the credit institutions like ccfl the possibility of imposing a similar credit ceiling on them if the need arose. credit growth of credit institutions has also slowed considerably and the need for a credit ceiling has largely dissipated. in modernising fiji ’ s financial system, we were very pleased to launch fiji ’ s real time automated payments system or fijiclear on 16 october. fiji is the first country in the south pacific to have such a state of the art payments system. fijiclear will improve efficiency in making and receiving payments as well as help safeguard financial stability. payments using fijiclear will deliver funds the same day compared with 3 to 6 days required to clear cheques. i take this opportunity to encourage you to use fijiclear for speed, certainty, reliability and convenience. i would like to thank ross and the finance companies association for their support and guidance as we embarked on this project. the fiji economy let me say a few words about the economy. an economic contraction is expected for 2007. in 2008, a mild economic recovery of 2 percent is expected led mainly by the tourism industry contributing to growth in the wholesale & retail trade and hotels & restaurants and transport & communication sectors. based on latest information, we expect better outcomes for the agriculture, forestry and fishing and manufacturing sectors. with the reopening of the vatukoula gold mine, we expect a positive contribution to the mining and quarrying sector. we have revised these economic figures. the new economic projections will be announced on budget day this friday. fiji ’ s balance of payments still remains a concern due to the poor performance of our traditional exports. the increase in oil prices will only further widen fiji ’ s trade deficit. the policies towards dampening import demand seem to be effective. but we must work together to grow our exports. at the bank, we recently announced changes to the export finance facility which will assist the export sector access credit at a relatively low interest rate. we have also removed the local content requirement. we hope that these changes will make the facility more attractive to the commercial banks and exporters. with the recent stability in the level of our foreign reserves, we have relaxed the limits on payment for credit cards for expenditure abroad, cash drawings and delegated limits on import payments