Our arrangement – currently the most generous and costly in Europe – should avoid what has started to happen in the United States: ten million job losses in fifteen days and possibly a lot more tomorrow; it protects employees and their incomes and maintains production capacities for the future recovery. The measures also include state-guaranteed loans, up to a total of  Page 3 of 8 EUR 300 billion, repayable over one to five years and for an amount covering up to 25% of annual revenue. Overall, banks are playing their part, but the Credit Mediation Scheme’s services, under the aegis of the Banque de France, are involved and ready to assist any businesses experiencing difficulties. Already, each week we are receiving over ten times more cases than last year. I will now turn to the monetary measures of this cash shield. All over the world, the major central banks have taken bold measures to guarantee financing for businesses in the short term, through purchases of commercial paper, and in the medium term, through purchases of corporate bonds. In this respect, the ECB was among the first to lead the way. The ECB also stands out in that it has the capacity to provide banks with immediate and almost unlimited liquidity, so that the banks can in turn finance all the economic players: businesses, government and households. To do so, during the course of two successive meetings the ECB took some exceptional decisions.
Global Money Week takes place on the 10–17 March and is a worldwide celebration through events and activities to help empower children and youth to be confident and responsible economic citizens. During this week, children are encouraged to engage in learning on how money works, including saving, creating livelihoods, gaining employment and entrepreneurship as well as living financially smart lives. And so for Samoa’s contribution to the event, the Central Bank decided to conduct a financial literacy poster competition to encourage kids to use their imaginations and knowledge about money choices, and help provide a creative outlet to demonstrate their knowledge. For this year’s poster competition theme “I can grow my money by...” myself and Mrs Vicseta Meredith of Business System Limited had the pleasure AND the hard task of judging the entries. We were very impressed with the quality of entries that were presented to us – so it pains us that there are only a limited number of awards we can give out for the competition. “Financial literacy” or “the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources” is an important life-skill in our diverse capacities as students, employees, consumers, savers and investors etc. In short, it is important for all responsible economic citizens to have. – So why not start now and start young? Start young on financial fitness...it will be fun and worth it!