focus. more and more, bankers are walking about offering innovative products that best address customer needs. modernisation modernisation and technology has catalyzed this new financial age. the provisions of atms, phone banking, internet banking and so forth have provided customers easier access to financial services from the comfort of their homes and offices. i am glad to say that fiji is not lagging too far behind the rest of the world in financial technology and innovation. i appreciate the commercial banks ’ effort to modernise our financial system. a lot has been done in this automation and modernisation. later this year, the reserve bank will be introducing an automated payments system which will facilitate faster clearance of cheques amongst banks. i wish to thank the banks for their support and guidance in this project. the fiji economy let me say a few words on the economy. our estimate before december last year was for the economy to grow by around 2 percent in 2007. this projection as you know is no longer relevant. we now expect the economy to decline by 2 to 4 percent in 2007. i know that this growth range is a bit wide. but it is deliberately left wide as we are still evaluating the full impact of the political crisis on the economy. to make matters worse, the impact of the recent flooding in the west and the north will now need to be factored into this scenario. unfortunately, we have carried many economic problems with us for some time. sugar continues to struggle. fishing, forestry and agriculture have not performed to their potential. production of garments is now less than half of what it used to be. the mining of gold has now stopped altogether. the political crisis has brought an additional dimension to these challenges. our exports of goods are not doing well. to make matters worse, imports are booming. and to make matters even worse, the rise in the price of oil has come at the worst possible time. our oil imports are four times what we used to pay some six years ago. the balance of payments therefore continues to come under pressure. this is the number one challenge that we face. reviving exports is the key. the only bright spot in our scenario is tourism. it has been the driving force of our economic growth since 2000. tourism will play a critical part in our economic recovery as it did in 2000. we hear some good news that tourism is bouncing back very quickly and we hope that this continue. without tourism, it is fair to say that the economy would have been worse off.

technical assistance by afi and pfip in the form of regional meetings, like this workshop, has continued to strengthen the platform we have for capacity building and knowledge sharing, which are key to the effective implementation of our respective financial inclusion strategies and initiatives. bis central bankers ’ speeches fiji - financial inclusion journey and key milestones : ladies and gentlemen and fellow colleagues, while our focus this week will be on inclusive insurance, to put things in perspective please allow me to briefly take you through some key milestones of fiji ’ s financial inclusion journey. the reserve bank took the stand, back in 2009, to strategically drive financial inclusion in fiji. i acknowledge in this regard the vision of our former governors and senior staff, as well as our key stakeholders, for realising and accepting the potential for financial inclusion to significantly contribute to fiji ’ s economic development. this resulted in the reserve bank, in 2009, establishing a new group within its organisation structure to focus on financial systems development. our partnership with the pacific financial inclusion programme was also established in that same year, when we hosted our first national microfinance workshop. fiji ’ s first national financial inclusion strategy was adopted as the major outcome of this initial workshop. since that time we have continued to take a collaborative approach, with the setting up of the national financial inclusion taskforce and its four working groups spearheading much of what we do. this model has worked well for us in providing a platform for effective collaboration between all stakeholders, which include the financial institutions, government agencies, donors, mobile network operators and civil society. getting the buy - in of our stakeholders was considered critical to the success of our collaborative efforts, and ensuring that this is in place all the time during our journey has been instrumental in the effective implementation of our financial inclusion strategy. in early 2010, the reserve bank of fiji issued three supervision policies with the objective of engaging commercial banks to extend their reach to the unbanked in fiji and in 2011 fiji was one of the first of 17 countries to make commitments under the maya declaration at the 3rd afi global policy forum in cancun mexico. in 2013, the reserve bank of fiji was awarded the inaugural maya declaration award in recognition of what was assessed as the effective monitoring and reporting of our global commitments towards financial inclusion. some of the significant achievements which contributed to the meeting of our agreed targets included : • the integration of financial education ( fined ) into the school curriculum at both primary and secondary levels ; • the introduction of mobile money ; • implementation