In closing, I want to reiterate that external auditors have truly been one of our key partners in the quest for greater financial stability. Thailand’s financial industry is currently in the midst of structural changes with the implementation of our Financial Sector Master Plan. One of the goals of the master plan is to promote greater competition, which in turn, may result in the evolution of bigger and more complex financial institutions. Against this background, our supervisors will need to fully embrace a risk-based supervisory philosophy and its focus on the quality of internal controls and risk management systems. Therefore, our relationship with external auditors will become even more important in the years ahead as we seek to strengthen banks’ risk management systems and enhance fnancial stability. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 55/2004
The fact that CPI inflation was far below the target can thus be seen as the result of a deliberate monetary policy from the autumn of 2008. GDP fell by 4.9 per cent in 2009. This is the largest fall in Swedish GDP in a single year in modern times. Average unemployment increased by approximately 2.2 percentage points during the year and amounted to 8.4 per cent in 2009. Both employment and the number of  BIS Review 32/2010  11  hours worked fell significantly. The reason that Sweden was so hard hit by the global crisis is that the Swedish economy is highly dependent on exports. The effect on GDP was reinforced by the fact that the households increased their saving. Companies also sold from stock to a great extent during the year, thus reducing investments in stock and contributing to the fall in GDP. The impact of the financial crisis surprised all the forecasters The turmoil on the financial markets has been part of the picture and has influenced monetary policy and the forecasts since 2007. It nevertheless came as a surprise that the situation would deteriorate as dramatically as it did in the autumn of 2008 and result in such a dramatic fall in production around the world. Neither the Riksbank nor other analysts predicted the strength of the global financial crisis and how much it would affect inflation and the development of the real economy.