The third area relates to close interactions among industry practitioners and the development of ground knowledge. While there are many opportunities for trade and investment among emerging economies, the business linkages are only beginning to grow. Forums such as the WIBC provide a valuable platform for practitioners to build their knowledge of each region and the business leaders. At the same time, for large-scale and long-term investments such as in infrastructure, effective knowledge of partners and on-theground presence are important ways of mitigating risks. Recent developments in Singapore 15. Let me therefore take this opportunity to say a few words about developments in Singapore. As an international financial centre in Asia, Singapore seeks to develop Islamic finance by leveraging on our existing strengths in banking, insurance, asset management  2  163/2009  and capital markets. Although relatively new, we have seen steady progress. MAS launched its Sukuk early this year. The Islamic Development Bank also issued a $ Singapore dollar-denominated trust certificate. In May, Olam International, a local trading firm tied up with the Islamic Bank of Asia to launch a Commodity Murabaha based on agricultural trade flows. Just last month, Singapore’s Keppel T&T and Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Holding Group announced an agreement to establish a joint venture asset management company to manage the world’s first Shariah-compliant data centre fund. Other Singapore companies and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are also using Shariah-compliant structures for their financing needs. 16. We were honoured to host the 5th Islamic Financial Services Board Annual Summit in May.
Here indeed we have a backlog, and we need to cross over to this new system in order to reduce costs for the financial sector and ultimately reduce the cost of credit. This will also result in cheaper loans. We will be carrying out tests on the market of new technologies, such as distributed ledger technology based on a blockchain technology, and we have already begun this process in order to implement the regulation of new technologies rationally, protecting the markets from risks. At the beginning of this speech I mentioned the strategic objectives of the Bank of Russia. These are our key priorities. You may have noticed that the tasks we set ourselves four years ago and those for the year 2016, which I have been speaking about today, as well as challenges of the future, are all, of course, related to each other. We consider it to be very important to respect the principles of continuity, consistency and predictability. We will no doubt be responding with flexibility to any given situation. The situation is volatile, there is a lot of uncertainty in the world. We will have to react in accordance with the challenges presented to us. But the consistency of our policy, I think, is very important. The preservation of trust is vital to development, as well as to financial markets. This is a key category – trust in the financial market and trust in monetary policy have been the most influential factors in terms of economic growth.