These public investments will partially take  BIS Review 46/2007  5  up the slack in the first half of the year as well as speed up private investment through a crowding-in effect. Of course, there remains the issue of political incidents which can still make things less rosy. This would not be under policymakers’ control; the government, however, is doing its best to take necessary safeguard measures in order to assure people of the state of security. Ladies and gentlemen, being confident of the medium-term outlook does not mean that we will be complacent. After all, we are in an environment of an ever-increasingly competitive global arena, more integrated financial markets, volatile capital flows, more inter-linkages between economies, and increasing trends toward liberalization. For policymakers, this means that the conduct of policy will become more demanding in the periods ahead. This leads to my third and final point. That is, to ensure that growth and stability are sustained in the long run, we need policy tools and persistent reforms going forward. From a long-term perspective, the critical challenge for the Thai economy is how to continuously improve its flexibility, efficiency, and competitiveness. In this respect, a crucial policy effort is a combination of financial and real sector reforms and policies that promote a sound and stable macroeconomic environment. To mention a few, infrastructure building will continue to be strengthened particularly through amendments and introduction of a number of legislation.
The stability and credibility of the banking groups operating here, supported by close cooperation between Baltic and Nordic countries also help Estonia overcome the crisis. Banks in Estonia have sufficient funds to support restructuring in both the business sector and the entire economy. Eesti Pank's analyses confirm that the current capitalisation is sufficient to cover possible larger loan losses without banks having to include additional capital. The resources of banks allow their lending decisions to be based on favourable medium-term and longer-term economic outlooks, since Estonia's economic convergence, i.e., the movement of our income level towards that of EU richer countries, will continue also in the future. Thus, the goal of banking and financial sector policy is cooperation with the home countries of the banks operating in the EU and Estonia to ensure the functioning of the common banking market and group-level stability. The steps taken by the home countries of the banks operating in Estonia have considered the interests of the entire group and thus supported financial stability in Estonia. In this light it has to be emphasised that the measures to support the economy approved in Estonia allow state aid also in a situation where financial markets no longer function normally. But the main aim of the state support measures is to organise the financing of starting and exporting enterprises. The total debt burden of Estonia's enterprises is relatively big and a decline in the total volume of debt in 2009 is a natural reaction to previous years' rapid increase.