Thus, the Supervision Department of the National Bank of Romania was set up with technical assistance from the Nederlandsche Bank. Also, forex and market operations developed from the co-operation with our colleagues from the Belgian central bank. Another form of cooperation between the member states of the Constituency was the fact that since 1993, a second constituency meeting at the level of ministers and governors was held annually in one of the member countries, on a rotating basis. The IMF management and senior staff were invited to speak on issues of interest. I have participated to almost all constituency meetings since 1990. I could testify that each of them was interesting and  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  fruitful. As a veteran I cannot help but remember the first meeting after the fall of communism, in September 1990. At that time I met three not only impressive tall men, but also, outstanding personalities: Governor Wim Duisenberg, Minister Wim Kok and Executive Director Goddard Posthumus. I have to say I had the honour to collaborate with all the executive directors of our constituency. Thus, it is a pleasure to remember the extraordinary relationships developed with Onno Wijnholds, Age Bakker, Jeroen Kremers, Governor Nout Wellink and Minister Gerrit Zahn. Dear colleagues and friends, I am proud to say that the constituency meeting held in June this year, in Romania, where both Belgium and Luxembourg representatives were invited, was a step forward towards this formal outcome.
What, I think, is more useful for businesses to hang on to is our expectation that when Bank Rate does rise, it will probably do so only gradually and to a level that is likely to remain materially below its pre-crisis average of 5% for some while – I have something like a 2–3% range in mind here. That reflects three factors. First, the process of private and public balance sheet repair will continue to weigh on domestic demand for some time, while the recovery in the euro area – our main export market – is likely to remain muted. Second, global longer-term safe real interest rates fell in the years before the crisis, reflecting in particular the unusually high saving rates in China, and this is likely to persist. Third, the spreads between risky market interest rates and Bank Rate are unlikely to return to their excessively compressed pre-crisis levels. So even if we start to withdraw some of the exceptional monetary stimulus in the not too distant future, you should not expect Bank Rate to shoot straight back up to pre-crisis levels. It is now five years since we cut Bank Rate to its historic low of 0.5% and launched our asset purchase programme (QE). Those five years have been tough for both businesses and households. But they surely would have been even tougher had we not taken that action.