payments system to make transactions. the payee should insist on the payer to use this new system for payments. fijiclear payments to date i am encouraged by the results so far of the use of the new system. on the first day of its operations, total payments that went through the system was about $ 172 million of which commercial bank payments was about $ 10 million. gross payments over the last 6 weeks have averaged above $ 850 million of which commercial bank payments exceeded $ 120 million every week. customer payments are rising and we have seen payments as low as $ 90 being made through fijiclear. the number of transactions is also rising. the system has the capacity to process 1, 000 transactions every 5 minutes. so there is a lot of space for growth. i am confident that we will see more and more payments made via fijiclear in future. security i would like to assure everyone that the payment system is secure. we have established a secondary site which is on line which means that if necessary we can operate the system from this alternative site. the site also acts as data backup. in addition, the communication lines are dedicated to the system and are secure. there is a dedicated team in the reserve bank monitoring and overseeing the transactions during the day. this team will provide adequate liquidity during the day to allow the system to work smoothly. it backup support and service agreement is in place. i am confident that with these measures, the system is extremely secure and reliable. charges let me say something about the cost of using fijiclear. because of what we believe the importance of the system nationwide and the financial sector, the reserve bank has shouldered all the establishment costs. after some discussions, we have agreed with the commercial banks to a fixed operating cost for the first year which in my view is quite a reasonable sum. we will review this maintenance charge after the first year of operation. in turn, i am confident that commercial banks will review their charges of using the system if they have not done so already and pass on the savings to their customers. we will monitor these charges closely. rtgs software provider logicacmg, a listed company on the london stock exchange provided the software and will also provide support and maintenance services. it is a leading payment software provider with a long list of central bank clients all over the world, including the european central bank and central banks of chile, turkey, sri lanka and philippines. it has also contracted a leading local it firm to provide appropriate back

savenaca narube : launch of a modern payments system in fiji speech by mr savenaca narube, governor of the reserve bank of fiji, at the launch of the rtgs system or fijiclear, suva, 16 october 2007. * * * chairman of the association of banks in fiji, mr. laurie melsop ; invited guests ; ladies and gentleman : introductory remarks a very good afternoon to you all. one of my visions after rejoining the reserve bank in 2000 was to modernize the payment system. this vision was driven by the need that i saw to make the payment system more efficient and secure. in my view, such a modern payment system would act as a launching platform for other modernization in our entire financial system. it therefore gives me great pleasure that this vision is now a reality. i am delighted that we are officially launching this modern payment system today. i welcome everyone to this ceremony and thank you for joining us to celebrate this important milestone in the history of fiji ’ s financial system development. as some of you are aware, the system went live on 30th august and i am glad and somewhat relieved to say that the system has been running smoothly for over 6 weeks now. fijiclear central banks normally give a name to their real time settlement system. for instance, trinidad and tobago named theirs “ safett ” ; philippines, “ philpass ” ; and the thai system is called “ bahtnet ”. we have decided to name our rtgs system, “ fijiclear ” : “ fiji ” denotes a nationwide system while “ clear ” signifies secure clearing process. we started the ground work on the project almost 5 years ago. i was delighted when the commercial banks readily shared our vision to get the project rolling. we issued a joint statement with the association of banks in fiji and set up a working committee to oversee the project. the formal contract with the software vendor was signed in march 2006. the projects like many other projects had its share of hurdles. for the reserve bank, the biggest challenge was to get a proper appreciation of the scope of this rather technical project which none of us had any prior experience in. in addition, we lost the lead manager of the project program half way through. establishing the infrastructure like secure communication channels was not that easy as you may appreciate in fiji. lastly, we had to negotiate the difficult issue of cost sharing with our commercial banks colleagues. i am extremely glad that we were able to overcome all these hurdles.