That is partly because banks have been extremely conservative in the last twenty to thirty years because of the war situation and they did not lend aggressively. More recently we saw some of them becoming a little aggressive and they got a bit burned when agriculture  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  was affected by the drought last year. Then you saw the big exposure to gold and pawning activities which also affected bank balance sheets slightly. Most of those problems I am glad to say, seem to be behind us. So the banking system looks in fairly good shape. Finance companies pose some concerns and. I think we have far too many of them. We were a bit too liberal in-terms of encouraging finance company growth in the last ten to fifteen years. As a consequence, today we are coping with some unusual situations in that sector. But there again, with some resolve and some out of the box thinking, we will be able to bring that sector also under control. So all in all, I think the financial system is responding favourably.
So the challenges are ahead of us. It is not easy to change mindsets. Remember, that a lot of people in this country, particularly those who work for the government have been used to a war situation. For most of their working lives, they have been living in a war economy. A war economy is very different from an economy at peace. That, in my view, is why you had a change of government this year and you have a new government, who is trying to win the peace. We won the war, but it was very difficult to win the peace. Why? Because our mindsets were stuck in the past. There was that concept of control. You had to control everything in the economy including prices. When I say prices, I mean the exchange rates, the interest rates, other prices which affect the functioning of the economy. That is all justifiable in a war situation. But when you come into a peace situation, where it is a normal functioning market economy, then you have to re-think, you have to get back to first principles, and reassess how the economy should work in a new dispensation.