A favourable external environment should continue to provide support for exports. Investment should also benefit from what are still very favourable financing conditions, improved business balance sheets and gains in corporate earnings. On the consumer side, spending is likely to grow more gradually and broadly in line with developments in incomes.
* * * The crisis has shown that the banking sector is deeply interconnected worldwide, and that a banking crisis can quickly spread from one country to another. It also laid bare a number of weaknesses in the global regulatory framework. But after long and tough negotiations, we agreed on the Basel III framework, which addresses most of the weaknesses found in global regulation.