germany and other countries almost a week ago, many people have asked how this affects the riksbank ’ s actions. as stated already on several occasions, the answer is : not much as long as the conditions for inflation have not changed. the riksbank targets inflation and it is this target that guides policy. in view of what has happened in the past month, there is reason, finally, to highlight a couple of points in the report. the first is that monetary policy is being conducted against the background of an economic upswing. a gradual increase in capacity utilisation is therefore probable. sweden does not differ from germany in that particular respect. the other point is the diminished risk of a development that is appreciably weaker than in the main scenario ; this assessment is supported by the latest statistics. in the light of the rising activity, the main difficulty in assessing future inflation currently lies in an uncertainty about developments on the supply side, wage formation in particular. it is difficult to foresee how the swedish economy will react to a broad economic upswing. it is therefore important, not least on that account, to analyse incoming information.

will help to influence african, caribbean and pacific governments in their advocacy for innovative sources of development finance to be a front - burner issue on the international economic agenda. ladies and gentlemen, it is no secret that small vulnerable economies in the caribbean have grappled with external shocks of varying magnitudes and duration over the past two decades. these shocks include a compression of aid flows, dismantling of preferential trade arrangements for sugar and bananas, interventions related to anti - money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism. more recently, the caribbean has been gradually recovering from the shock of the global financial crisis, which originated in the united states and spread to europe, the region ’ s two closest trading and investment partners. the untold story, however, is that the combined influence of these multiple shocks has led to a dramatic and fundamental shift in the composition of external financing flows to the caribbean. bis central bankers ’ speeches in my respectful view, the most significant change in the regional pattern of external resource flows stemmed from the sharp compression in official development assistance ( oda ). flows of oda to many caribbean countries began falling in the 1990s, as donors redirected their aid priorities to the newly emerging commonwealth of independent states and the least developed countries. this is certainly ironic because the eighth mdg recognizes that developing countries require more generous development aid to have the best chances of reducing poverty and accelerating development within the stipulated 15 year timeframe. faced with declining aid resources, many caribbean governments resorted to more expensive commercial borrowing to bridge their funding gaps. this, combined with the growing inability of regional governments to generate high enough primary fiscal surpluses for debt servicing, contributed to a large public debt overhang. gross public debt in the caribbean climbed rapidly from 65 percent of gdp in 1998 to a peak of almost 100 percent of gdp in 2002, before falling to a still elevated 80 percent of gdp in 2012. the accumulation of public debt was even faster in the eastern caribbean, moving from just over 60 percent of gdp in 1998 to a high of almost 120 percent of gdp in 2004, before falling to 95 percent of gdp in 2012. generally, a public debt ratio of over 90 percent of gdp is considered exceptionally high. by this measure, four countries in the caribbean are projected to hold exceptionally high public debt in 2013 : jamaica ( 140 percent ), st. kitts & nevis ( 139 percent ), grenada ( 109 percent ), and antigua & barbuda ( 93 percent ). another six