virtually all the land rights in the communal areas are customary rights, with their own registration system. this is unlike in the rest of the country where land rights are registered in a properly functioning deeds office. this implies that over 50 per cent of the namibian population does not have secure and tradable land rights. it further means that half of the namibian people cannot use their land to raise capital. consequently, it means that 38 per cent of namibia ’ s land is what is termed as “ dead capital ”. director of ceremonies, this is another example of a dual namibia, that is, one country, with a less formal tenure system for the communal areas and an advanced one that allows for security and tradability for the rest of the country. ladies and gentlemen, the land tenure system is an important factor in explaining development or lack thereof. in his book titled “ the mystery of capital ”, hernando de soto, termed by the time magazine as one of the five leading latin american innovators of the twentieth century, demonstrates with startling research findings from asia, africa, latin america and the former socialist ’ countries that a major problem in developing countries is their inability to use land rights to produce capital. according to de soto, the problem is in the fact that most developing countries ’ residents hold resources in defective forms. a typical example of this, ladies and gentlemen, is, a house built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded and not tradable. in such an environment, this asset cannot be turned into capital and cannot be used as collateral. this situation is contrary to what is generally happening in advanced countries, where every building and every piece of land is legally documented, which essentially activates that asset as a resource to potentially participate in economic activities. by de soto ’ s calculations, the total value of the real estates held in a defective form by the poor of the third world and bis central bankers ’ speeches former socialist nations is estimated to be around usd9. 3 trillion. in namibia, these assets could amount to n $ 20 billion representing about 23 per cent of gdp. let ’ s imagine, ladies and gentleman, a situation where only 30 per cent of the communal land is turned into productive capital. this may potentially unlock a sizable investment equivalent to 7 per cent of gdp, almost equal to the current contribution of the mining sector to gdp. the question is ; what will the impact be if it is not 30 per cent, but 80 per cent of

are a few key features of that new normal. for example, interest rates have stayed very low in recent years not only in the united states, but also in many other advanced economies. for a variety of reasons, it seems likely that equilibrium interest rates will remain low in the future. low interest rates present a challenge for the traditional ways of conducting monetary policy. that is especially true in recessions when, in the past, the federal reserve has typically cut interest rates by 4 to 5 percentage points in order to support household spending and business investment. but when equilibrium interest rates are low, we have less room to cut interest rates and thus less room to buffer the economy using our conventional tool. for example, following the most recent recession in 2008 and 2009, we kept interest rates as low as the committee thought they could go, which was close to zero, for many years. 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches another big change in the economy is that inflation doesn ’ t move as much with economic activity and employment as it has in the past. this is what economists mean when they say the phillips curve is very flat. in many ways, the flatter phillips curve has advantages : it means that the labor market can strengthen a lot and pull many workers that may have been sidelined back into productive employment without an acceleration in inflation, unlike what we saw in the 1960s and 1970s. similarly, inflation doesn ’ t fall as much in recessions. but there is an important risk with today ’ s low sensitivity of inflation to slack : it makes it more difficult to boost inflation to our objective of 2 percent on a sustainable basis. and, as we know from other countries, if inflation consistently falls short of the central bank ’ s objective, lower inflation tends to get embedded in people ’ s expectations. expectations that inflation will remain low in turn can create a self - fulfilling dynamic with actual inflation, making it even more difficult for the central bank to boost inflation. and because inflation is reflected in nominal interest rates, that, in turn, can also reduce the amount of policy space the central bank has available to prevent the economy from slipping into recession. in fact, in recent years, central banks around the world have had to use a larger variety of policy tools than they traditionally used to respond to the financial crisis and support economic expansion. some issues to explore given the new normal of low equilibrium interest rates and low sensitivity of inflation to slack, it is prudent to assess how well various approaches worked both