We now have a modern and effective electronic clearing system, with the Cheque Truncation project fully rolled out on 5 December 2013. This was preceded by a historic event early in the year when cheques were cleared manually for the last time on 31 January 2013. In some countries, cheques themselves are becoming history as the world moves to a cash-lite or cashless society.
The overall GDP growth rate has been low because the labor force population has been declining; however, if we look at the real GDP growth rate per capita, which takes into account changes in the employment rate over time, we see that, while the rate was at 0.4 percent in the 2000s, it recovered to the 1990s level of 1.3 percent in the 2010s (Chart 12).