and confidence. if i may say so myself, the redesigned website is more aesthetically pleasing. it highlights the bank ’ s new corporate logo, and colours and really does justice to the bank ’ s image as the industry leader and regulator, and a major player in the financial sector of trinidad and tobago and in the region. the site has been redesigned to offer something to the casual browser ( who can get a quick idea of the scope of our activities ), to the researcher ( more interested in statistics and financial analysis ) or to someone looking for information on how to book the auditorium or to plan a tour to the money museum. there is transparent information on the financial institutions act and on the process of bank and insurance supervision ; the website will be linked to that of the financial services ombudsman which would expose the user to a whole new set of information. we like to feel that we are the employer of choice, so we have also included information on career opportunities and competency profiles for jobs within the bank. the new website is easier to navigate and attractive. information on the website is classified into simple groupings to meet the needs of out core publics : employees, financial institutions ; researchers and academics ; other central banks ; external financial institutions ; the media and the national community as a whole. the scope of statistical information has also been expanded to meet user needs. information on monetary policy developments, economic developments, bank information, data and statistics are now available. the financial environment is changing very rapidly – more so now than at any period in our history and this is being driven by the proliferation of modern information technology. as we respond to these changes, we invite the public to access our resources to find out more about us, so that you can enable us to better serve you. let me emphasise that the media will continue to be an important part of our communications strategy - even if you misquote us sometimes. you have a ready audience that our website will never be able to rival. the advantage of our website is that it creates an expanded and direct communications channel between the bank and its publics. also, while in the media, the message is mediated and the quality and accuracy are beyond our control. in our website we have no excuses, since we have full control of the message. i wish to thank all the persons responsible for bringing us to this point. i encourage the media and the public at large to be vigilant in ensuring that the site is adequately maintained and

microeconomic data from the living costs and food survey to examine consumption patterns by income quartile, split by the indebtedness of households. it is striking that the sharpest falls in consumption were seen amongst high income, highly indebted households, though there may be other explanations for this too. the most important process of balance sheet repair is, though, taking place within the financial sector itself. as we saw in chart 1, the pre - crisis period saw a considerable increase in leverage in the financial sector, leaving banks and similar institutions highly exposed when optimism evaporated. bank funding costs and credit default swap spreads then rose substantially, symptomatic of investors ’ doubts as to whether they would get their money back ( chart 5 ). funding costs have recently fallen back in the wake of policy initiatives, such as our funding for lending scheme, though doubts still linger. so, quite independently of any tightening of regulatory requirements, there has been market pressure on banks to make bis central bankers ’ speeches balance sheets safer. that, in turn, has encouraged them to direct their supply of loans to just the more credit worthy borrowers. moreover, elevated funding costs have also put upward pressure on the loan rates charged to borrowers, offsetting the impact of lower policy rates. the drag from these factors – heightened uncertainty and de - leveraging – has been augmented by two further factors. first, higher prices for oil and other commodities, on the back of firm growth in the emerging economies and adverse supply developments, implied a deterioration in our terms of trade, imparting a further drag to the growth in real incomes. second, as mpc members noted frequently in the years before the crisis, the composition of uk demand needed to re - balance away from domestic demand towards net exports in order to shift the current account into balance. on top of that, the financial crisis has most likely resulted in some deterioration of the capacity of the financial sector to generate export earnings, creating a need for an additional expansion in the rest of the tradable sector of the economy. generating this shift in the composition of activity requires a real depreciation of sterling. while that has happened – the real effective exchange rate for sterling is almost 15 % below its pre - crisis level – it will inevitably take time for resources to transfer to the tradable sector from the domestically - facing sector. moreover, weak growth in most of the other advanced economies has not provided the best of backgrounds for such a re