and approved the building of 500, 000 housing units in all regions of the kingdom over the coming five years with allocations of rls 250 billion. the limit of housing loans extended by the real estate development fund was increased from rls 300, 000 to rls 500, 000 which will hopefully provide more houses for citizens and constrain the inflationary pressures stemming from the increase in house rents. you also ordered setting a minimum wage of rls 3, 000 for all saudi government employees, allocated a monthly amount of rls 2, 000 for job seekers, and raised capital of the saudi credit and saving bank by rls 30 billion. the number of family members covered by the social security was increased from 8 to 15 with an allocation of rls one billion for that purpose. the government subsidies for charity associations rose by 50 percent to rls 450 million annually, and needy families ’ sons and daughters were supported to join bis central bankers ’ speeches universities through allotting them a portion of seats, facilitating their admission requirements, and exempting them from some tuition fees. this package of honorable royal decrees will enhance the standard of living of the least - income segment of population and promote its ability of saving and, thereby, raise its future productivity and income, and reduce poverty, to which you always attach considerable attention. in the health care arena, you ordered supporting the ministry of health with rls 16 billion in order to carry out the expansion of a number of hospitals and health centers. you increased the maximum limit of the ministry of finance ’ s financing program of private hospitals from rls 50 million to rls 200 million. this would hopefully enhance health care services in the kingdom. under your wise leadership and continuous guidance, the supreme economic council continued to accomplish a number of development steps aimed at restructuring and reorganizing the economy and streamlining regulations and legislation in order to promote the rise of the level and competitiveness of the economy, achieve the optimum operation of the production factors and provide an attractive environment for domestic and foreign investment. as a result, the investment environment has improved. according to the “ doing business report 2012 ” issued by the world bank, the kingdom ranked twelfth among 183 world countries in terms of ease of business performance. the executive board of the international monetary fund noted that the kingdom was well posed to encounter the global financial crisis. however, the sound supervisory and regulatory frameworks significantly contributed to strengthening the capacity of the financial sector to withstand the crisis. the board stressed that

severe when exuberance had evaporated and prices had corrected, which is often the time when the system is most risk averse. we aim to develop this approach over the next three years, starting with the 2016 stress test. along with a regular assessment of data and indicators it will be a key part of a forward looking, data driven approach to setting the uk ’ s countercyclical capital buffer for banks. we have set out more details in a recent bank paper. 2 as always, one issue will be assessing the costs and benefits through time in so far as that is practicable. another is where to set the countercyclical capital buffer in different parts of the cycle to enable it to be relaxed at times of stress. a third will be how far in advance one needs to act. if you thought that the impact of changes in the ccb happened with a lag, that there were benefits in a ccb above zero that could be relaxed, that risks were building or that there were benefits to moving policy gradually, these would point to moving earlier rather than later in the cycle. this approach is intended to maintain the resilience of the system over the cycle. but, clearly, requiring banks to hold more capital will very probably also have a dampening effect, leaning against the cycle. the third approach to time varying macroprudential policy i mentioned would take this further. it would set policy with the explicit objective of pushing back on the cycle until the level and perhaps the composition of credit was judged to be more acceptable in risk terms. this of course would be a bigger “ call ” for the macroprudential authority than targeting resilience. again it requires a very careful assessment of costs and benefits. i do not think the macroprudential policy framework should “ start ” there ; the starting point should be maintaining resilience. but given the history and the objective of maintaining financial stability, i do not think that the macroprudential authority can foreswear making such calls when necessary. indeed, the fpc has implicitly already done this in taking action on the flow of high loan to income mortgages. in taking this action, the fpc took a view on the risks if the distribution of mortgages shifted towards a large share of high loan to income loans. we intended to limit the risks arising from increasing household indebtedness and the macroeconomic vulnerabilities this creates. the action was forward looking –