The ceiling, being the average in the last decade of our 22 competitor countries, reflects our determination to be internationally competitive with them for the years to come. Our inflation targeting model, although linear-quadratic, shows the zone or banding features by exhibiting a fan-shaped prediction both for the GDP and inflation. The Inflation Report that we issue at the end of each quarter shows an advanced feature in that it gives a sensitivity analysis around a band of exchange rate and a range of oil prices, something countries more advanced than us have hitherto been unwilling to enter into. But as I have said, we are trying to be transparent and trying to get our people and investors to be able to act as accurately as possible and to form a view as to what the future of the economy might look like. We believe entirely that the better the estimates, the lower will be the costs one puts or has to put for taking the risk of investing in the economy and that, in the long run, the country will be more competitive using less resources to produce the same goods other countries are producing. For this reason, we are constantly trying to improve our techniques.
In the area of transparency, commercial banks since August this year have had to announce at the end of each month their NPL level, penalties and fines imposed by the authorities and the related lending. Public and stakeholders’ opinions are thereby used to augment the new supervision and examination process we are installing with the help of the OCC and the FDIC. In terms of bad banks, I expect that by the time I get back, or soon after I get back, the disposal of all intervened banks will be complete. In terms of bad clients, since on the afternoon I left for the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, the contract for the transfer into the government-run Asset Management Company of some 12 billion dollars of assets was signed and the Cabinet had also approved the covered asset pool arrangement for another intervened bank for a further 5 billion dollars. I expect that the NPL at the end of this year will be in the teens - a quite manageable level compared to the high of 48% at the beginning of the year. On the average, banks are now back into the positive spread, actually of 1.28% last month, which is low by traditional standards and still not profitable but still over half of the spread that we expect banks to be operating in under the new competitive and transparent conditions that we will see in the future.