According to the World Bank data 5 , between 1960 and 2004, the share of the services sector in some selected countries was as follows:  The share of the services sector Percent of GDP 1960  1980  1995  2004  UK  53  54  66  72  Australia  51  58  70  71  France  52  62  71  73  Japan  42  54  60  68  USA  58  64  72  75  Singapore  78  61  64  65  Hong Kong  62  67  83  88  China  20  21  31  35  India  30  36  41  52  Sri Lanka  48  43  52  58  The statistics show that the current level of services in Sri Lanka is more or less equivalent to the status which the services enjoyed in developed countries in 1960s. While Sri Lanka is far ahead of the two giant growth machines in the region, viz., China and India, it would not be too long for these two countries to overtake it, given their current services promoting policies. It is also observed that the services sector has been growing in importance in all the countries during the past five decades or so. Some countries have now attained the optimal level of services above 70 percent.
Second, the legislative amendments must strike an appropriate balance between the rights of creditors and those of debtors, especially the socially excluded, and I should like to highlight the advisability of concentrating efforts in the field of social policies: a country as economically, socially and institutionally developed as Spain has sufficient resources to face up to and resolve the most dramatic and unacceptable situations of exclusion and need without affecting financial stability in the process. All these issues have been duly discussed in this Congress, which is why I shall focus on the situation of our banking system and on our economic outlook. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Role and situation of Spanish banks I should first like to highlight the crucial importance of banks in resource allocation and their role of intermediation between those supplying and demanding financing. Mass access to owner-occupied housing would be almost inconceivable without their intermediation. Mortgage lending is a very important segment of the financial intermediation in which credit institutions engage. As at December 2014, mortgage loans for house purchase extended by credit institutions to households amounted to slightly over € billion, more than 40% of total bank lending. The number of outstanding mortgage loans for house purchase is at present 5.8 million, a large percentage of which (82%) are at floating rates, which has allowed for the transmission of the Eurosystem’s more accommodative monetary policy to household financing conditions.