But I can certainly tell you a lot about how it is perceived from my part of the world. And when it comes to the behaviour of financial markets we all know that perception is as important as reality. Perception and reality - Hong Kong Allow me to illustrate this point by starting first with Hong Kong, for I cannot resist the temptation to take advantage of this opportunity to do a bit of advertising. I would like to describe some of the negative perceptions which financial markets and analysts have had about Hong Kong over the last few years, and how these have compared with actual developments. First was the belief that Hong Kong’s fixed exchange rate with the US dollar would not survive the Asian economic crisis. The reality is that it has survived, and the Hong Kong economy has now rebounded strongly, with the year-on-year growth rate of GDP for the fourth quarter of last year recording 8.7% and the forecast for the year 2000 now put at 5%. What the doomsters refused to recognise, despite the compelling evidence of the preceding one-and-a-half decades of the same fixed exchange rate system, was that Hong Kong has a highly flexible internal cost-price structure, which can quite quickly deliver the same external relative price adjustment as a currency devaluation.
Ravi Menon: Building talent in the financial sector Opening address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Institute of Banking & Finance Annual Conference, Singapore, 22 June 2011. *  *  *  Ms Kate Sweetman, fellow Council Members of the IBF, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. The financial crisis has triggered a fundamental shift in the global financial landscape. There has been much discussion globally on levelling up regulatory standards to meet the risks of an increasingly complex and inter-connected financial services sector. But there has been less discussion on the competencies that need to be levelled up in financial services – competencies in risk management, corporate governance, and financial supervision. Only if competency standards are raised, will the ongoing financial regulatory efforts bear fruit. Since its inception, the Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) has been playing a critical role in raising the standards of the financial sector in Singapore. Today, this has become more relevant than ever. Let me give an update of IBF’s efforts. In 2005, IBF launched the Financial Industry Competency Standards (or “FICS”). This is a set of competency standards developed by the industry, for the industry. It provides a practice-oriented approach and a clear roadmap for people working in the financial sector to attain the competencies they need to do their jobs. FICS has taken off quite well. As at end-2010, some 360 training/assessment programmes have been accredited under the FICS framework.