And in the Express & Star, you have the most successful regional paper in the country. Sport, too, plays an important role in the life of the Black Country. Next summer twelve schools in the Wolverhampton and Walsall areas will be participating in Chance to Shine – a new campaign to regenerate cricket in state schools, and of which I am proud to be the President. Given that in business the need to work in teams is of the essence, it is sad that competitive team sport in our schools has declined. The aim of Chance to Shine is to give young people from all our communities, boys and girls, a chance to experience – before the world of work – what it is like to be in a team, and  BIS Review 112/2006  1  to learn how to win and how to lose. Last summer Chance to Shine enabled almost 50,000 children to play competitive cricket for the first time. Young people need role models and sport is perhaps the most important source of them. Of the many Black Country sports men and women who have been role models down the years, there is one whom I would like to single out tonight – Vikram Solanki. Born in Rajasthan, Vikram moved to Wolverhampton as a small boy, and became the finest and most exciting batsman to emerge from the area for a long while. Now captain of Worcestershire, one could not think of a better role model to bring communities closer together.
Svein Gjedrem: Economic policy challenges Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), to the Executive Board of the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry, 19 September 2002. Charts for the speech can be found on the Norges Bank’s website. *  *  *  A year and a half ago, the Government and the Storting adopted new guidelines for economic policy, which call for an annual use of petroleum revenues equivalent to the expected real return on the Government Petroleum Fund. At the same time, the Government issued a new operational mandate for monetary policy. Norges Bank shall set the key rate with a view to maintaining low and stable inflation. The first sentence in the monetary policy mandate refers to the value of the krone. Stability in the national value of the krone implies that inflation must be low and stable. This is the best contribution monetary policy can make to economic growth and prosperity and is a necessary precondition for stability in the financial and property markets. The regulation also states that monetary policy shall be aimed at stability in the international value of the krone. The krone exchange rate fluctuates from day to day, from week to week, and from month to month. We do not have the instruments for fine-tuning the exchange rate. The first paragraph of the mandate sets forth an objective. The last paragraph specifies what Norges Bank shall do. The inflation target is set at 2½ per cent.