A:  Avenue for meetings – To promote discussion and policy analysis among central banks, the Asian office has hosted and supported numerous meetings and events in the region, collaborating with other organisations such as the Financial Stability Institute, EMEAP and SEANZA. R:  Reserves management – The Asian office plays a vital role in the management and administration of Asian Bond Funds 1 and 2 that aim to broaden and deepen regional and domestic bond markets. The dealing room of the Asian office also provides Asian central banks with ready access to BIS banking services, helping facilitate their liquidity and portfolio management of foreign reserves. Over these 10 years, I have seen the Asian office play a significant role in helping to strengthen financial sectors, develop financial infrastructure, and promote stability and  BIS Review 88/2008  1  financial integration in this region. And since its establishment, the HKMA has stepped up its participation in the BIS' wide range of activities, sometimes co-hosting seminars and meetings, fostering an even closer relationship between us. Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge with thanks the great work of the BIS management and its staff, who have made the Asian office a success. In particular, I would like to thank Bob McCauley who has contributed significantly to the achievements of the Asian Office in the past decade. The accomplishments of the BIS in Asia over the past 10 years call for celebration. With this in mind, let's celebrate these achievements and anticipate even greater endeavours to come.
Remember that in a basic Solow growth model, investment should grow at the growth rate of productivity plus the growth rate of hours worked along the steady state path of the economy. For many European countries, there is scope to increase labour participation rates over time. But given demographic trends, a major part of raising investment demand must be engineering an upward shock to productivity. Besides, internal devaluation can be the backbone of reform in a small, open economy, but not in a larger and more closed one – and even less in the euro area as a whole, where it is by and large a zero-sum game. This is why the composition of reforms also matters – we need reforms that both boost competitiveness and raise productivity. The reforms undertaken so far, despite proceeding at different speeds, have achieved a significant internal devaluation in some euro area countries. Since 2009 Greece has almost entirely reversed the ULC growth it experienced in the pre-crisis period (–19.4% relative to the euro area), while good progress has also been made in Spain (–11.3%), Ireland (–12.3%) and to a lesser extent Portugal (–8.2%). As a result, most of these countries have been able to improve their competitiveness and export. Spain and Portugal, for example, have persistently outperformed the euro area between 2011 and 2013, with both countries gaining more than 10 percentage points of export market shares relative to their competitors.