working life, up to at least age 55 to supplement their retirement income. this is a great opportunity and challenge for the trust industry to design product choices that conform faithfully to the laudable objective of this new law. further, the improving economic prospects also set the stage for progressive liberalization of our foreign exchange regime to allow for greater flexibility in overseas investing. this should provide professional fund managers the necessary room to maneuver the diversification of their portfolios and to access a richer variety of qualified assets …. for the benefit of their customers. ladies and gentlemen. the reform agenda must be pursued vigorously …. if we are to secure the opportunities. at the financial market level, the bsp is closely collaborating with key market players through their respective industry associations, as well as with our fellow regulators particularly the sec ….. to achieve more transparent and investor - friendly markets. it is in this context, that we welcome the recent launch of the new government securities benchmark system that can promote fair price discovery, more effectively. we expect the trust industry to work within this new system so we can achieve full transparency and comparability of performance. the new benchmark should also assist in properly valuing debt securities and other financial products like derivatives, repos, as well as securities borrowing and lending arrangements … and thus promote their acceptability to the market. as the galaxy of available domestic capital market assets expands and the market deepens …. it is the trust industry that will be a clear winner. we are also working hard to constantly improve the payments and securities settlement systems. it is basic that we aspire to fully achieve efficient dvp settlement in all securities transactions …. in line with global standards in the area. this is critical to both investor protection and market stability. we also need to work closely to reform the trust industry itself. in that spirit, we are devoting dedicated resources at the bangko sentral … through our newly formed trust supervision group … to work closely with toap. their priorities include ( 1 ) basic trust department operating standards ; ( 2 ) risk management guidelines ; ( 3 ) trust department rating system ; ( 4 ) specialized examination procedures ; and ( 5 ) improvements to uitf regulations. at a more fundamental level, we are also reviewing the basic governance arrangements of the trust department …. as an entity within the bigger banking organization …. to minimize potential conflicts of interest, while preserving natural business synergies. this includes a closer look at the composition of the trust

christian noyer : monetary policy and banks, and the rise of global protectionism introduction by mr christian noyer, governor of the bank of france and chairman of the board of directors of the bank for international settlements, at the gic ( global interdependence center ) central banking series “ monetary policy and banks, and the rise of global protectionism ”, paris, 10 march 2014. * * * these are challenging times for economic policy making. as was apparent at the g20 meeting in sydney, the performance of the world economy is contrasted and uncertain. a central question is whether monetary policy has a role to play to improve the situation. to me, the answer is unambiguously “ yes ”. monetary policy should remain active because persistently low inflation threatens the achievement of price stability as commonly defined by all major central banks today. not all central banks are the same and there is some diversity in their objectives, mandates and, of course, the situations they are facing. remarkably, however, all advanced economies have converged – in recent years – towards the same definition of price stability, first adopted by the eurosystem in 2003 : an inflation rate “ close to 2 % ” ( and in our case : below but close to 2 % ). i will focus my introductory remarks on two issues related to this challenging objective : the low inflation level and the forward guidance strategies. i ’ ll start with low inflation. inflation has been falling recently in all advanced ( although not emerging ) economies. its behavior has been atypical compared to previous episodes following a recession. this fall was especially marked in the euro area, from 2. 7 % in 2011 to 0. 8 % in december 2013. recently, developments in the euro area have started to diverge downward from some other advanced economies such as united states and canada. the sources and reasons for such a low inflation are complex and multiple. there are many uncertainties. temporary and global factors may be at play in the euro area with import prices going down. i also think there are more permanent and deep forces pushing inflation down both at the euro area and global level. besides there is still an important unused capacity – commonly labeled as “ slack ” - in most advanced economies, as demand has not yet caught up with its pre - recession levels and firms, as a consequence, have not recovered their pricing power. commodity price inflation has been trending down recently. this is true both for energy and food prices. commodity prices have