This may involve a risk that capacity utilisation will remain high and that inflation will eventually overshoot the target. Household debt has increased at a faster pace than income over the past ten years. Norges Bank’s calculations indicate that debt growth may largely be due to the sharp rise in house prices in recent years. Higher house prices have a fairly prolonged effect on household debt growth. Even though the rise in house prices is expected to slow, credit growth will therefore remain high for a fairly long period. Given the assumptions underlying our projections, it is likely that debt will continue to grow at a faster pace than disposable income through the entire projection period. The household debt burden has increased over the past year and is now record high. The interest rate burden is, however, relatively low. A normalisation of interest rates will increase households’ net interest expenses, but according to the projections the interest burden will not be higher than it was at the end of the 1990s. Households will be vulnerable if unexpected disturbances result in higher-than-expected interest rates. Challenges ahead Petroleum activities give us an economic base that is not available to many other countries. But it also presents us with many challenges. 5/7  First, our petroleum resources are part of our national wealth. When oil is extracted and sold, petroleum wealth is transformed into financial assets. This wealth belongs not only to our generation, but also to future generations.
* **  Page 9 of 9 We have just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the ECB, and next year we will mark the 10th anniversary of the SSM within the ECB. This is certainly not a time for complacent celebrations; it remains a time for active vigilance. But these milestones are an opportunity to recognise that, throughout years of severe international crises, the European financial system, and particularly the French one, is increasingly resilient. The ACPR is committed to contributing further to this. I will now hand the floor to Jean-Paul Faugère, Vice-Chairman of the ACPR, to speak about the insurance sector. i  The slight decrease observed in 2022 results from lower Tier 1 capital, which was impacted among other things by the lower valuation of insurance subsidiaries due to the rise in interest rates, compounded with an increase in risk-weighted assets stemming from a dynamic trend in customer loans. ii Observatoire du financement des entreprises, Le financement des entreprises dans un contexte de crises, 30 May 2023