We have a number of private foreign bankers present here, representing institutions that battled with me in the days of South Africa’s isolation and debt rescheduling arrangements, but also lend great support to me and the Reserve Bank, particularly over the past five years when we had to reintegrate our country in a rapidly changing global financial market environment.
I pay tribute to the South African bankers who do not always agree with the Reserve Bank’s hard line approach on financial disciplines, but who always remain loyal to their central bank. It did not go unnoticed in the world financial markets over this past year, with major global financial market disruption, that the South African banking sector remained stable and sound.