gill marcus : globalisation can be a force for good address by ms gill marcus, governor of the south african reserve bank, at the dinner in honour of ambassadors and high commissioners to the republic of south africa, pretoria, 1 october 2013. * * * your exellencies, ambassadors, high commissioners, counsels and diplomats, good evening. thank you for accepting our invitation to join the south african reserve bank this evening. if there was ever any doubt that we live in a highly integrated world, financial markets have a tendency to remind us on a daily basis of the inter - linkages between our countries. fed chairman ben bernanke issues a statement on monetary policy developments in the us and financial markets around the world react. european car sales fall and platinum miners in south africa feel the effects. coffee drinking in china increases and farmers in ethiopia earn more. our world is probably more integrated today than at any point in human history. with the level of interdependence that the nations of the world have today, it is worth asking whether we have the appropriate relationships, institutions and rules for everyone to benefit from global integration, and whether we have the institutional mechanisms to protect the poor and vulnerable in such an integrated world. globalisation has increased opportunities for all countries to become richer. markets for goods and services have grown. countries are not just able to exploit their present comparative advantages but are also able to use technology and innovation to change their comparative advantages, to move up the value chain, thereby raising incomes and living standards of the poor. the global financial system has also adapted to a world unimaginable a few decades ago. capital is able to flow from savers to borrowers, seeking opportunities in every corner of the planet. the net effect of greater global integration is that about a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past twenty years, with over half of these in china. ladies and gentlemen, globalisation has also increased risks and vulnerabilities for all countries, in particular for poor countries and the poor and low - skilled workers within countries. a housing loan crisis in the us eventually translates into rocketing youth unemployment in spain. a banking crisis in cyprus sends shares on the world ’ s stock exchanges lower. curbs on the importation of gold in india impact on the earnings of ghanaian and south african gold miners. and so, while globalisation and its tools – supply chains, technology and finance – has made a major positive contribution to development, these same

opening remarks by francois groepe, deputy governor of the south african reserve bank, at the launch of the project khokha report sandton convention centre, johannesburg 5 june 2018 good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. on behalf of the south african reserve bank ( sarb ), i would like to extend a sincere and warm welcome to everyone here today on the occasion of the launch of the report on project khokha, which had as its scope the trial of interbank wholesale settlement using distributed ledger technology ( dlt ). this was our first dlt initiative ; its aim was to contribute to the global initiatives that assess the application and use case for dlt. i am pleased to confirm that project khokha was successful in that it proved that the typical daily volume of the south african payments system could be processed in less than two hours with full confidentiality of transactions and settlement finality. this was done using iso1 20022 standard messages within two seconds across a network of distributed nodes and with the requisite resilient distributed consensus. the sarb is pleased that so many of you have taken the time out of your busy schedules to join us today. we appreciate that there is great interest in this work, both locally and from abroad. 1 international organization for standardization page 1 of 4 i will make brief introductory remarks and then hand over to the governor of the sarb, mr lesetja kganyago, to deliver the keynote address. my remarks centre around three observations. barely six months ago, i could not have imagined that we would successfully trial the use of dlt to process high - value transactions. this was in part because i am acutely aware of the challenges involved in building wholesale payments capabilities and appreciate that, and proofs of concept can be both complex and take time to develop. as an example, the requirements for such an endeavour need to be carefully defined, prioritised, and mapped into functional and technical specifications. furthermore, the coding, development and testing required is an intense and laborious exercise. add to that the challenge of integration between multiple participants one comes to an appreciation why such initiatives are often multi - year projects. the design, building and delivery of project khokha happened in less than three months. this is a noteworthy achievement. it is evident that the pace of innovation and technological development requires a shift to this new ‘ agile design approach ’ which demands fast turnaround. after all, the mantra of financial technology, or ‘ fintech ’