the ministry of finance planning and economic development, the ministry of justice and constitutional affairs, the uganda communications commission, the capital markets authority, the uganda bankers association and the technical staff from bank of uganda. in a special way we would like to thank the eac and the african development bank for the support provided under the eac - payment and settlements system integration project. the next steps after the stakeholders workshop will be as follows : to incorporate comments from the workshop. the draft bill will be submitted to parliament through the minister of finance planning and economic development for the enactment of the payment systems law followed by the president ’ s assent. bank of uganda will then operationalize the law. with these remarks, i wish the stakeholders interactive and fruitful deliberations.

the task of investment managers and risk managers will be very challenging. they need to re - evaluate their strategies for risk management and strengthen their tools and capacities for modeling risk. this workshop has been designed to contribute to building capacity to meet these challenges. the workshop will also provide regional and international experts with an opportunity to exchange views, ideas and their own experiences of managing risk. a major focus of the workshop is the use of modeling techniques to guide risk management. statistical models have become integral to risk management in financial institutions and among financial investors. such models have made a crucial contribution to the development of risk management ; providing it with a more rigorous, scientific foundation. but, for the reasons that i have already mentioned, some of these models are now attracting critical scrutiny from policy makers, regulators, investment managers and academics. notable among the statistical models is the value - at - risk model, which has become the principal tool for the management of market risk, and to some extent, the management of credit risk in many financial institutions. if this model is such a powerful tool, as its proponents claim, why did financial institutions make losses which were many times greater than the amount which value at risk models estimated was possible? risk models and risk management in general are based on the assumption of normal market conditions, where willing buyers and sellers exist, with adequate market liquidity to enable assets to be priced in the market. what happens when the market collapses? it is clear that risk management models perform poorly in such circumstances. nevertheless, statistical models will continue to play an important role in risk management, despite their shortcomings, but practitioners must be wary of placing too much faith in the results of models alone. sound judgement, based on a comprehensive knowledge of markets and a thorough understanding of economic and financial theory is an essential complement to the use of statistical models. mefmi has assembled an impressive line - up of international and regional resource persons to conduct this workshop. they bring a huge amount of experience and expertise in the various issues will be covered here in the next two weeks. i am confident that the workshop will help all of you who are participating to master the statistical modeling techniques which are essential for risk management and to improve your understanding of the concepts and theories of risk management. with these few words, i declare the workshop open. i wish you fruitful deliberations.