In 2013, Sabana also launched a corporate sukuk programme in Singapore to help finance its purchase of industrial properties; and  •  Islamic capital market activities have also taken off, with 31 sukuk issuances over the last five years. We have more sukuk issuances than other conventional jurisdictions, with total outstanding issuance reaching a high of $ billion in 2014, compared to $ million in 2009. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11. To support the development of Islamic finance in Singapore, MAS established a Sukuk Facility in 2009 to provide SGD Islamic regulatory assets for banks undertaking Islamic finance activities here. We remain the only conventional central bank to have done so. There have been 8 issuances to-date totalling $ million, supported by robust demand, with the latest issuance in November 2014 being our largest yet. Our sukuk programme has facilitated the growth of banks’ Islamic finance assets in Singapore, and also encouraged corporates to issue sukuk to meet demand from financial institutions and investors. 12. Going forward, we will continue to strengthen our Islamic finance regime and capabilities to enable us to support opportunities from deepening trade and investment linkages between Asia and the Middle East, as well as infrastructure projects within the Asian region. In infrastructure for example, an estimated $ billion will be needed annually until 2022 to meet the basic infrastructure needs in ASEAN alone 3.
The “this-time-is-different-syndrome” is a powerful reminder of the dangers of complacency. One key observation is that financial crises are followed by unusually prolonged recessions in economic activity. Another valuable insight is that the fiscal and financial dimensions are closely interconnected. Fiscal imbalances can undermine the financial sector; financial sector imbalances can weigh down on the credibility of the sovereign; both can spillover into the real sector, and vice versa. The book foresaw that the massive implicit liabilities towards the financial sector accumulated by governments could result in unsustainable levels of sovereign debt. Despite the important theoretical and empirical advances to which Professor Rogoff has contributed substantially, there is still much to be learnt about the root causes, the triggers and the propagation mechanisms of crises. The major challenges for policymakers posed by the existing knowledge gaps are reflected in the very controversial debates about the optimal responses to mitigate and resolve the current crisis and to prevent future crises. In this context, since his time at the IMF, Professor Rogoff has featured prominently in global policy debates, producing analyses and making recommendations on how to contain the current crisis and restore overall macroeconomic stability in the euro area. On that very subject, as we all know, conditions in financial markets have taken a turn for the worse since the second half of July and early August.