*  *  *  Assistance provided by Shri R Gurumurthy is gratefully acknowledged. 1. It’s indeed a pleasure to inaugurate this Conference on ‘Financial stability, credit distress and Economic Growth: The way forward’ organized under the aegis of the Union Bank – Great Lakes Center for Excellence in Banking and Finance.
We commend the Fund, the Bank, as well as all member countries, for the adoption of a comprehensive single assessment methodology for AML/CFT. Cooperation among FATF, IMF, World Bank and other multilateral institutions will ultimately lead to more efficient use of resources and a better co-ordination of the policies, taking into account country-specific problems for combating this menace.