that increased financial market efficiency has an important part to play in improving overall economic efficiency - the question is how best we can bring it about. jean - claude and i would also agree, i suspect, that the introduction of the euro has contributed to the increasingly positive macro - economic performance of the eurozone economy, taken as a whole, over the past couple of years. the need to satisfy the maastricht criteria for entry to the euro served as a strong incentive to a number of the present member countries to pursue disciplined, stability - oriented, macro - economic policies in the run - up to monetary union ; and - despite the dampening after - shock of the global financial crisis of two or three years ago - that macro - economic stability has provided the platform for the eurozone ’ s subsequent strong macro - economic performance. looked at in its own terms that performance is impressive - with relatively strong growth, currently and prospectively ; falling unemployment, albeit from a painfully high level ; and a broad balance between overall demand and underlying supply growth reflected in both broad balance in the eurozone ’ s current account and low and stable core consumer price inflation. by any conventional standards that is a pretty good performance. i must confess that, measured against that performance, i find some of the popular criticism i read in the media - of lack of political coherence at the eurozone level, of lack of co - ordination between fiscal and monetary policy, and of shortcomings in the conduct and presentation of policy - greatly exaggerated if not wholly misplaced. the problem, of course, has been the weakening of the exchange rate of the euro since its introduction - particularly against the dollar. this was not at all what most people had predicted - given the earlier widespread fears of an overheating us economy and the progressive widening of the us current account deficit - and most conventional analysis has for some considerable time now suggested that, on “ the fundamentals ”, the euro has become increasingly undervalued. i share that view. why then has the euro weakness persisted? frankly i ’ m not at all sure that anyone really knows the answer to that question. what i think we were all somewhat slow to recognise was the impact of the remarkable acceleration of productivity growth in the us economy - not just faster productivity growth but accelerating productivity growth on the latest data up to the second quarter of this year. this has allowed the us economy to continue to grow faster than before without generating inflationary pressures - though there is

in - hand to design a better institutional arrangement, tools and instruments to promote effective monetary and macro - prudential policy. in line with that, it is also agreeable that the high level committee of the islamic financial services board ( ifsb ) members called for the islamic financial system to strengthen regulatory and liquidity infrastructures as well as building a healthy and beneficial linkage to the real sectors. bis central bankers ’ speeches excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, besides all the advances in monetary and macro - prudential policies to strengthen financial stability, we are at the stance that structural policies is also crucial in supporting financial system resillience. lesson from the 1997 / 1998 crises, we learned that micro and small enterprises were relatively resistant to economic shocks, giving significant contribution to financial and economy recovery. hence, structural policies need to be promoted to advance wealth distribution to more people, particularly low - income class. in regard to this concept, islamic social sector that covers zakat and awqaf systems can play very important role in accelerating economic development and supporting financial stability. in indonesia, as studied by bank indonesia ’ s researchers in 2012, total of all zakat potential from various sources is approximately rp217 trillion or equivalent to usd22. 6 billion. this number is equal to 3. 4 % of indonesia ’ s 2010 gross domestic product ( gdp ). however, the realisation of those potential zakat is still below our expectation. recent data recorded only rp2. 7 trillion or 1. 2 % of total zakat potential has been received. this is our home - work to explore ways to boost this number. unlike the other commercial sources of fund, the zakat funds would never cause unnecessary burden to the economy since the type of the funds is not commercially claimable, and hence, no excessive social cost will occur. the same also goes to the awqaf sector where, as a matter of fact, more people are endowed with low cost assets. again, potential benefits from those assets has not been materialized yet, because most of the assets are still poorly managed. based on data from indonesian awqaf board, awqaf land has now reached not less than four billions of meter square, a very significant source if we can optimized them. with this huge potential of zakat and awqaf land, we can expect a significant drive to economic development. i personally believe that these ideas are in - line with those of the governments, as well