Despite the above developments, monetary policy management was significantly challenged in 2010, owing to delays in external donor disbursements and government’s expansionary fiscal policies which had to be accommodated by the Bank. The weekly foreign exchange auctions were utilised to complement monetary operations in order to sterilize liquidity, in addition to providing much needed foreign exchange to businesses. The amount allocated for private sector support through the weekly auction in 2010 was $ million, which was lower than the $ million in 2009. This reduction was necessary to cater for government’s infrastructural development needs whilst maintaining the required level of reserves to absorb endogenous and exogenous shocks. As you are aware, the Bank has been providing foreign exchange through the auction system but with our import bill increasingly higher than our export earnings, pressure on the Leone has intensified. There is therefore the need for a concerted effort in ensuring that export proceeds are repatriated into the country to ease these pressures. The Bank will therefore be embarking on a drive to ensure maximum compliance with the laid down procedures with exports and its attendant receivables from abroad. The depreciation of the Leone in 2010 was only 7.7 percent compared to almost 30 percent in 2009. It is expected that with the promotion of an interbank foreign exchange market, stability of the Leone will be enhanced in 2011. In addition to the above, I am pleased to inform you that our external reserves are comfortable and our external debt is manageable.
My colleague Arthur first presented this vision at the Hong Kong Fintech Week last November. On that occasion, we also announced a series of activities to be launched these two years in pursuit of the vision. And today’s event is one of the many activities that we have planned for this year, 2021. 5. In practical terms, how should we go about bringing our Regtech vision into reality? We do recognise that we are starting from a position in which many banking practitioners remain quite unclear about the concept of Regtech. They may be uncertain about what values Regtech might bring, or exactly how they should leverage on Regtech in order to bring about measurable benefits. Here, we see four essential actions that are needed to transform bank attitudes and practices towards Regtech. Four actions towards Regtech 2025 6. The first action is that we at the HKMA mustunderstand the Regtech landscape evolution in Hong Kong. It’s no good launching initiatives that are out of touch with what’s actually happening on the ground. We need to be able to map our progress towards Regtech 2025, and understand where our banks and other ecosystem partners are at in that journey. 7. Our White Paper on Regtech published in November last year provided a very good starting point, supplemented by the Regtech Adoption Index that we have just launched recently. These have shown that most banks here are already using at least some form of Regtech in their operations, most commonly in preventing and detecting financial crimes.