Ladies and Gentlemen, you have to believe me when I tell you that this session was conceptualized before the current happenings which are now affecting three well-known conglomerates in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago and before the subprime problem erupted in the US, but not before Barbados had committed to financial liberalization with respect to CARICOM with a hope of accelerating the development of our capital markets, so the timing has turned out to be a bonus in terms of interest in capital markets.
14 Since the start of the 2000s, the share of low-cost countries in extra-euro area manufacturing imports has increased from just over one-third to almost a half (Chart 4b). 15 Rising imports from low-cost countries are putting downward pressure on extra-euro area manufacturing import prices.