The strong and close bond has continued to evolve in the areas of trade, investment, education and finance. While the bilateral trade in goods between the United Kingdom and Malaysia only accounts for 1.4% of our total trade, Malaysia's bilateral trade in services with Britain accounts for 6.3% of our trade in services in 2008. While the balance of trade is in our favour, the balance in the services account is in the favour of the United Kingdom amounting to RM2.3 billion. In the area of mobility of people between our two countries, there continues to be a significant two-way flow relating to employment, education and tourism. Tourists from Britain represent the largest group of visitors from the European market. In the area of education, there are a great number of Malaysian students studying in the United Kingdom. This has been reinforced by the twinning programmes. In addition, British education for Malaysians has been strengthened by the branch campuses in Malaysia. More recently, the relationship building has extended into the area of Islamic finance. This relationship was cemented with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the UK Trade and Investment and Bank Negara Malaysia. The early development of Islamic finance was very much domestic-centric. This recent decade has seen the internationalization of Islamic finance. This has increased the potential for strategic partnerships between international financial centres that will bring with it mutually reinforcing benefits.
I favor delaying liftoff until I am more certain that we have sufficient momentum in place toward our policy goals. And I think we should plan for our path of policy rate increases to be shallow in order to be sure that the economy’s momentum is sustainable in the presence of less accommodative financial conditions. I look forward to the day when we can return to business-as-usual monetary policy, but that time has not yet arrived. 3  6  Lockhart (2014). BIS central bankers’ speeches  References Federal Open Market Committee, 2014, Summary of Economic Projections(external-pdf), Washington, DC, September 17. Kocherlakota, Narayana, 2013, “A time of testing,” speech, St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, St. Paul, MN, November 12. Lockhart, Dennis, 2014, “Thoughts on liftoff,” speech, Global Interdependence Center, Sixth Annual Rocky Mountain Economic Summit, Jackson Hole, WY, July 11. BIS central bankers’ speeches  7