for the good audience. 19. to conclude let me state clearly that the potential to expand our economies through structural reforms and initiatives should form the cornerstone of all policies. ghana ’ s economy is going through a structural transformation and these initiated policies are supporting the move in that direction. as a continent, policies should be focussed on how to develop a vibrant capital market to support growth, how to benchmark our internal regulation against global standards to help improve standards, overcoming regional integration challenges to support growth, and leveraging on new technology and data sharing to improve efficiency and innovation. let us ponder critically over these issues as we go through our deliberations. 20. i look forward to fruitful engagements and that the key takeaways will help inform policies going forward. thank you

to preferred agent point for convenient and efficient service delivery. the register will also be used to inform stakeholders on operations of agents in violation of regulatory and prudential requirements. 15. citizenry identification through activities of the national identification authority : the banking industry, through the initiative of the bank of ghana, cooperated with the national identification authority ( nia ) to implement a national identification system that meets the know your customer ( kyc ) and customer due diligence ( cdd ) requirements of the banking sector. the identification system is based on biometric technology and would provide continuous verification access to banks at all times. the system is expected to also address incidence of identity fraud at point of transactions and serve as reliable system for profiling the underserved and the unbanked. 16. fostering a digital and property address system : a digital and property address system, was put in place by government to allocate addresses to properties through the use of global positioning system ( gps ) technology. the address system seeks to improve business operations and lessen the burden involved in identifying customer location. a national address registry is expected to be generated to enable financial service providers to validate home and property addresses of customers to facilitate financial service delivery. 17. ensuring mobile money interoperability : as part of the bank ’ s policy to transform the payment ecosystem, an interoperability project was implemented to boost the efficiency, accessibility and competition within the mobile money space. under the project, disparate mobile money platforms were linked to each other through central switch to facilitate funds transfer across mobile money networks. the system is also expected to integrate with interbank payment systems infrastructure to create an integrated and interoperable digital retail payments ecosystem, and facilitate seamless funds transfer across payment systems. the project has the potential to stimulate uptake in mobile financial services and promote financial inclusion. 18. the points raised above demonstrate that the absa financial markets index for which we are launching the fourth edition has become a major reference point for economic policy makers and financial sector leaders in africa. this is important in our quest to improve upon the efficiency of the african financial markets to attract lower funding sources to better the economic life of our people. i urge absa to continue to challenge policy makers using this index, other innovative tools and a forum such as this. on behalf of the bank of ghana, i wish to congratulate absa for successfully launching the fourth edition of the african financial markets index today and to thank you all