s rich and poor. and the accompanying public outcry over these differences, reflected in the often vociferous and violent protests at imf, world bank and wto meetings around the world, serve to highlight even further the international realisation that the collective effort towards economic and social development must be intensified. the world bank ’ s world development indicators 2000 report concludes that the proportion of povertystricken people can be halved by 2015. this assertion rests on two conditions, namely that economic growth resumes and that inequality between the world ’ s poorest and richest countries does not increase. according to this report, a sixth of the world ’ s population, primarily in the developed world, received nearly 80 percent of world income while the poorest 57 percent of the world ’ s population received only 6 percent of world income. however, there has been some progress in fighting poverty. in east asia the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has fallen sharply since 1987, mainly because of progress in china. but in almost all other developing regions the number of poor people has been on the increase. in south asia the number of people living in extreme poverty rose from 495 million to 522 million, an increase of 5, 1 percent. however, in sub - saharan africa the number of very poor people increased by about 48 million to 291 million – that is an increase of some 16, 1 percent. the report also points out that 17 developing countries managed to reduce their mortality rates of children under the age of five between 1990 and 1998. but in 13 countries the mortality rates worsened. many of these are african countries where armed conflicts and the spread of hiv / aids have compounded the evils of poverty. in terms of economic growth, asia once again scores highly. over the years from 1990 to 1998, the fastest growing region in terms of gross national product per capita was east asia and the pacific with growth averaging 6, 4 percent. south asia followed with 3, 8 percent. the middle east and north africa showed small gains while sub - saharan africa fell behind with a negative growth rate of 0, 3 percent. still, the positive aspect is that the service industry has been progressing in developing countries. this includes sub - saharan africa, which has been shifting towards the service sector. however, the world bank indicates that this has been at the expense of industry, with the share of agriculture remaining more or less constant at 17 per cent. the world bank ’ s african development indicators for 2001 shows that

, in both the long and short run. credit cards were not affected as much. it is surprising that such a change would lead to an increased use of paper instruments. the researchers also found that the burden of this change would fall much more on lowincome consumers, a useful policy insight. i hope we will also get some good papers and some good insights out of this survey. 2 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches to conclude, i would like to congratulate the cross - functional team, led by the national payment system department, that dedicated long hours to this study. i'm sure the team is relieved to at last launch the results – but this information is so important, their job is not done. we will be repeating these surveys in future. thank you all. 1 south african multiple options system 2 the us survey is conducted by the federal reserve bank of atlanta 3 koulayev, s., rysman, m., schuh, s. and stavins, j. ( 2016 ). explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by us consumers. rand journal of economics, 47 : 293 – 325. 3 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches