9  AIL was introduced in 1992 as a mechanism to make New Zealand fixed income more attractive for foreign investors, by enabling investment free of "non resident withholding tax". 10  BIS Review 11/2007  markets, often in a foreign currency that has a lower interest rate structure so as to minimise the cost of the AIL.
In addition to the global crisis, Fiji also suffered one of the worst flooding in its history in January this year. When the year started we were expecting a positive growth of around 2 percent. However, the double effects of the global crisis and the floods led us to revise our economic forecast down to minus 0.3 percent.