, gtz / sida, for their assistance in the process of formulating the 5year financial markets development plan, as well as the consultants who facilitated the process. the major goals that the plan will seek to achieve are ; harmonisation of regulatory frameworks in the financial sector, infrastructure development, increase in investor base, deepening the financial market, capacity building, supporting regional integration, promotion of cost effective financial intermediation and promoting market information dissemination. the specific areas of emphasis will include ; to bring the unregulated market participants into the regulatory ambit. this will involve reforms in legal and regulatory frameworks as well as liberalisation of the pension sector, to foster competitive, long term financing. another challenging area that the plan is expected to address is extending financial infrastructure beyond the urban areas, so that the rural areas can also enjoy the benefits that financial markets offer. extending financial outreach will be enhanced by the introduction of new institutions, products, services and payment systems in the rural areas, to ensure that the rural population is enabled to save and to participate in investments in the financial markets. the bank of uganda is already contributing to this effort by licensing new banks, in order to introduce greater competition, with the hope that this will encourage the banks to extend their presence to the unbanked rural areas. i expect many other non - banking financial institutions such as insurance companies, microfinance institutions, securities exchange, etc. to follow suit. government will also be encouraged to divest its interests in the remaining parastatals in which it maintains ownership through public offerings in the stock exchange in order to widen the ownership of these institutions to the majority of ugandans. the other crucial aspect which the 5 - year financial markets development plan is expected to address, is financial literacy. it will be difficult to see through the various initiatives proposed in this plan, if the population remains financially illiterate. the fmdc, through its sub - committees, is expected to educate and sensitise the public about the various financial markets programmes, in order to make the ugandan financial market vibrant, so that ugandans can benefit from regional and global integration. in order to realise the objective of transforming and modernising the ugandan financial markets, i urge the fmdc and its subcommittees to rededicate and commit themselves to the achievement of the objectives enshrined in this plan. i realise that what lies ahead of us is no mean task, however, since we have already taken

##ent to unanticipated systemic risks. uganda is currently engaged in the market - wide adoption of the international swaps and derivatives agreement ( isda ) to facilitate derivatives trading as a risk management and hedging tool, as well as a funding tool. this is in addition to the already adopted global master repurchase agreement ( gmra ). the adoption of these agreements has broadened the bou tool kit for monetary and foreign exchange policy implementation and reserve build - up operations, hence further strengthening the resilience of uganda's financial markets. bou also launched the repo guidelines to the international community on the sidelines of the imf - world bank meetings in morocco this year, and these can now be found on the bank of uganda website. the gazetting of the financial preference and appraised book value regulations in april 2023 led to an increase in horizontal repo transactions. this has greatly reduced credit risk among interbank players and facilitated a more efficient monetary policy transmission. uganda has now commenced the process of drafting a uganda netting financial agreements bill, which, when complete, will give uganda a clean netting opinion, effectively reducing risks such as settlement risk and credit risk and hence enhancing investor confidence in uganda's financial markets. markets that have been granted a clean netting categorization have observed several - fold increases in investor participation in their markets and, hence, enhanced access to capital. ugandan government securities have also gained global visibility through international listing on the ftse frontier emerging market index, effective july 2023. we are also in discussions to list on the ababi index of the afdb and, thereafter, the jp morgan 2 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches emerging market index. these indices provide global visibility for our government securities attracting more offshore investment which should in theory eventually lower government borrowing costs. the ugandan market is also in the process of adopting the fx global code of conduct to support ethical trading in the financial markets. despite our improvements in numerous areas, we are still plagued by the extremely low capacity of local investors, characterized by pension assets per capita of only about $ 125. this has adversely affected our performance under pillar 4 : " capacity of local investors ", with a score of just 14 %. we, therefore, recognise the need for further pension sector reforms to ensure that pension assets are invested in the real sector of the domestic economic growth. the bank is intentional about increasing efforts to develop the domestic financial markets. we have and continue