172 commercial banks ’ branches and account for over 12 % of the total currency activities in the country. as the banking fraternity looks forward, the lessons learnt from these three centres will inform policy and strategies for the next phase of this initiative. honourable deputy prime minister and minister for finance, in finalizing my remarks, allow me to express our appreciation to the government for the continued support to the banking sector initiatives. notable areas of these initiatives are : mobile financial services platform ; establishment of credit information sharing framework, establishment of agency banking ; operation of deposit taking microfinance institutions and more recently, the cheque truncation system. these initiatives have been rolled out under the background support of the government and more specifically the ministry of finance. the central bank of kenya in collaboration with the kenya bankers association will continue working hard to make a positive contribution for the prosperity of our country and to make kenya investors ’ financial hub of choice. bis central bankers ’ speeches with these few remarks, it gives me great pleasure to invite the deputy prime minister and minister for finance, hon. uhuru kenyatta, to address this occasion, officially launch the currency centres initiative in kenya and formally open meru currency centre. thank you bis central bankers ’ speeches

in particular has grown rapidly. the amount of data transferred on mobile networks has nearly doubled every year for the last decade. 2 at the same, real consumer prices for information and communications technology have fallen steeply. during the past two decades in finland, prices of communication services source : eurostat, information society statistics, accessed 2 may 2016. source : finnish communications regulatory authority, mobile data transmission volume, accessed 2 may 2016. bis central bankers ’ speeches have fallen by a half and prices of information processing devices have tumbled to less than one tenth of their former level. 3 moore ’ s law is a familiar concept. in 1965, intel founder gordon moore observed an important trend in the efficiency of computers. moore ’ s law, which is named after him, states in its present form that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. although the breakdown of the trend has been anticipated for a long time, moore ’ s law has described development surprisingly accurately over the last few decades. economists are fairly unanimous that the most significant impact on economic and productivity growth arises from so - called general - purpose technologies. the steam engine, electricity, and computers have been inventions that could be utilised widely in different sectors of the economy. they have enabled the organisation of production in completely new ways, and accelerated productivity growth enormously. ict also fits the definition of a general - purpose technology very well. it is possible to use information and communications technology in nearly every sector of the economy. digitalisation, too, is all about the harnessing of new technologies for use throughout the economy. the financial sector is no exception in this. in recent years, digital platforms and the platform economy have become an integral part of the current technological revolution. many of the world ’ s most valuable companies in terms of market capitalisation have been in business for only a few years. of course, when examining market values it ’ s worth remembering that they can change very quickly, as happened in the dot - com bubble around the turn of the millennium. in any case, the success of many companies that have grown rapidly in recent years has been based precisely on platforms. uber, facebook, alibaba and airbnb are all companies whose business is based on a digital platform. a platform is an operating model that facilitates value - creating interaction between external producers and consumers. a platform has two functions : it provides a framework for interaction, and it sets the ground rules for interaction. the aim of a