While the Bank pursued its strategy of investing in higher-yielding instruments, it also reviewed its investment policy to increase concentration in near-cash instruments to respond to the crisis. In addition, the Bank purchased two metric tons of gold under the limited gold sales programme of the IMF in November 2009 to diversify our portfolio of foreign assets and mitigate the impact of currency volatility.
While external auditors, on the other hand, are responsible for providing reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatements and prepared according to international financial reporting standards. The global financial crisis, however, not only revealed weaknesses in risk management, control and governance processes in banks, but also highlighted the need to improve the quality of external audits of banks.