The legislative framework envisages that the non-bank deposit taking institutions and the banks should be subject to the same prudential regime. In furtherance of this, the Bank of Mauritius decided to extend several guidelines to this segment and we are soon bringing it under a risk weighted capital adequacy measurement system. There is another important aspect that I need to highlight here.
The legislation envisages that we encourage merger of deposit taking institutions among themselves or with banks or even their conversion as banks. The contribution of financial intermediation in the GDP of Mauritius has been growing steadily and has gone up from 10.3 per cent in 2005 to 10.5 per cent in 2007. It is forecast to be about 10.8 per cent in 2008.