bank which we bury tonight, have a common in - house culture of anonymous letters. if poison - pen letters and anonymous tracts were also, like field and track events, an olympic discipline, the bank of mauritius would have won a gold medal a long time ago! well before the current avalanche of sleaze allegations and malpractices targeting my person. it pains me to see the time and resources spent by some disgruntled staff in tarring management ’ s image. but i must say that i often admire the fertile imagination and creative instincts behind some of these concerted attacks. it is sadder still to see some of these smear reports being taken up by the mainstream press. your bank would probably have got home with a bronze medal for the preposterous allegation that an unnamed high official of the bank of mauritius has bribed your ceo for some unfathomable reason. you must be wondering what happened to the silver medal. let me tell you that this would go to an equally nasty piece of work alleging that a senior member of the political establishment and one family member are involved in money laundering. now all these crossed my desk in the last four weeks. this must have been the kind of thing which malcolm de chazal, a famous mauritian artist, writer, philosopher – and the closest we have had to a polymath – was referring to when he said that “ a maurice on cultive la canne a sucre et les prejuges ”. now, there ’ s a culture that we could do without. but these are mere diversions. they may detract us. but they certainly do not distract us from the mission and the mandate that are ours. we at the bank of mauritius have been advocating a culture of transparency for greater accountability. we have been canvassing the idea of establishing a select committee of the national assembly for hearings of the governor and his associates on the bank ’ s policies and strategies. we believe this will help to clear the air and expose the sensational headlines to more rational debate. indeed, we have plenty of reason to be satisfied with our record so far. this is not the time or the place to give you chapter and verse of all the changes that we have brought since assuming office in february last year. it will have to wait for another day. despite the gloomy tales from abroad of the demise of the banking sector here, in mauritius we can take some pride and comfort that, in

. and fifth is the need for further reforms to reduce bottlenecks and increase productivity. except for the much - needed increase in our domestic savings rate, now alarmingly below 15 % − or nearly half its historical peak – the measures are of a structural nature and not within the domain of monetary policy. the bank has long been fighting to normalise interest rates to induce a greater savings effort but much of the time, as you are aware, it has unfortunately been a losing battle. 14. to return to the question put, can the past mauritian “ miracle ” – be extended into the future? how are our institutions faring? are we getting the best from our state - owned enterprises? they command such a large chunk of our national resources that they impact national competitiveness. are we doing enough bench - marking with the best in the world? how far are our firms cutting costs, increasing competitiveness, and improving productivity? embarrassing as some of the answers may be, such questions must be confronted head - on so that “ the miracle ”, if such it is, can be projected for generations to come? 15. the message of the past is adaptation or disaster. in the last two decades, in both commerce and banking, we have been confronted by seeming miracles of technological change. we have had the microchip, the fibre - optic cable, the world wide web, satellite media, the smart phone, cctv systems, videoconferencing, call centres, on - line sales, nano - technology, and so on and on. some of you have been quick to pick up the kit and adapt it to your needs, but much of the old mauritius still surrounds us, with a reluctance to change. svirydzenka k., and m. petri, “ mauritius : the drivers of growth – can the past be extended? ”, imf working paper, october 2013 bis central bankers ’ speeches innovations in banking 16. in banking, i am pleased to report, we are in the midst of, not merely a spring cleaning, but a veritable banking reformation. it is a reformation that embraces the instant digital process of trade in bills of exchange, letters of credit, and the emergence of a global payments and settlements system. mobile payments, electronic wallets, and internet banking are here to stay. we are moving into paperless banking and, indeed, to a cashless society. a new digital currency, bitcoin, made