committee and a risk and investment committee. this has strengthened the executive board ’ s work on responsible investment and investment strategy, risk limits and large real estate investments. as you know, in january 2016, the government also appointed a new deputy governor, with special responsibility for investment management matters. the supervisory and control structure has been strengthened, among other things by establishing an internal audit function for the bank and an audit committee solely comprising external members of the executive board. moreover, since 2010 norges bank ’ s supervisory council has reported supervisory results directly to the storting, and in addition an external auditor was appointed for the bank. investment strategy, governance and organisation must continue to evolve in tandem the sceptics who 20 years ago doubted the decision to give norges bank task of managing the oil fund have not been proven right so far. in the national budget for 2018, the ministry of finance states that the bank has managed and continues to manage the fund in a sound manner. norges bank believes that the bank is well positioned to manage the gpfg and perform central banking tasks in a sound manner also in the future. if the fund remains under the aegis of the bank, norges bank recognises that there are arguments for establishing a separate committee for monetary policy and financial stability. such a committee will substantially unburden the board of central banking matters, and the composition of the board can then be tailored more closely to specific tasks relating to investment management. in this case, the executive board favours a 4 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches model that is based on the current governance structure. norges bank also recognises that there are aspects of the current organisation and governance that could be reconsidered. the organisation, governance structure and supervision must be considered in the light of new challenges for the management of the fund and for central banking. in recent years, changes in the ministry ’ s mandate have given the bank greater responsibility for formulating parts of the gpfg ’ s investment strategy. the executive board and the organisation have had to devote greater resources to investment management, partly owing to the addition of unlisted real estate to the gpfg ’ s investment universe. since the beginning of 2017, the bank has been responsible for deciding the allocation to unlisted real estate subject to an upper limit. in addition, the executive board now decides whether individual companies will be placed under observation or excluded from the gpfg ’ s investment universe on the basis of advice from

savers. savers would only put their money in banks if they are confident that it will be there when they need it. in turn, the banks will lend this money to the borrowers when they are certain that it will get repaid. so at the end of it all, money goes around and everyone is happy. when we examine our financial system in these terms of soundness and efficiency, we can see that we have come a long way in the last ten years. fiji voluntarily subjected its financial system to a financial sector assessment program by a joint international monetary fund and world bank mission in 2006. this comprehensive study while pointing out several improvements, confirmed that fiji ’ s financial system is sound. with the implementation of these recommendations, we can look ahead confidently to a financial system that is even more versatile in fiji. this augurs well for businesses, investment and growth. at this stage, i wish to clarify that the reserve bank regulates and supervises only the financial institutions that we licensed. these currently include commercial banks, insurance companies, credit companies and foreign exchange dealers. we have added the fiji national provident fund to the list since 2003. the key intention of this supervision is to protect depositors, the policy holders, members and the financial system as a whole. there are some finance companies that we do not license and we do not therefore supervise. we have put out an advertisement to this effect. we advised the public to exercise caution when investing with finance companies that are not licensed by the reserve bank. the bank will take appropriate legal action against unlicensed finance companies that are found to be carrying out banking business in fiji. banking business is generally defined as accepting deposits from the public. one key issue that we monitor closely in our supervision is the quality of the financial institution ’ s loan book together with the provisioning level that they have allowed. i am pleased to say that despite the economic downturn this year, the quality of the industry ’ s assets remains intact with more than adequate provisioning. at the same time credit growth has slowed markedly. this is again good from the point of financial stability and soundness. efficiency on the other hand very much depends on modernisation, technology and competition. we have seen several initiatives in technology and modernisation on both the individual bank level and the industry wide level. at the individual bank level, we now enjoy modern banking services like eftpos, internet and phone banking and atms. we can also send money anywhere in the