The second point I want to raise is that if mistakes cannot be avoided, at least we should learn from them. It is the sovereign prerogative of any state to deal with that issue within its own borders, and I shall not elaborate on that. The Fund, on the other hand, is an international public institution and is constantly confronted with the need to justify its actions. Though strictly speaking it remains accountable only to its members’ authorities, in reality, the legitimacy bar has been raised in recent years. A wider section of society is more and more eager to engage the Fund in the various aspects of its activity. I think this is a most welcome development: the Fund has become an institution much more ready to listen than before. A milestone in this respect has been the institutionalization of the process of evaluating Fund activity with the creation of an Independent Evaluation Office in 2001. This office is now fully operational. It has already produced very valuable analyses, and I am sure that its evaluations will greatly contribute to improving the future way of doing business of the Fund. The prerequisite for a constructive enlarged debate is of course transparency. And transparency has taken a “quantum leap” in the last decade, to use the words of the Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato. Switzerland has always pushed to help the IMF in opening up and overcoming its questionable reputation of being a secretive institution. We are happy with the results.
In a globalized world, it is even more imperative for the Fund to focus on promoting stability as a global public commodity. We have enough experience to know how costly it can be if things go wrong. Saying that Switzerland treasures a stable international environment is in many respects an understatement. Given the openness of our economy and the fact that we host an important financial centre, international financial stability for us has all the connotations of a vital national interest. To put things into the right perspective, allow me to mention a few figures that show how interconnected our economic well-being is with global developments. In 2003, Swiss exports of goods and services amounted to 44 percent of GDP. The GDP contribution of our heavily internationally oriented financial sector reached 10 percent. This figure rises to 14 percent if we also include the insurance sector. Swiss banks occupy a leading international position, particularly in the area of wealth management. The value of total assets managed in domestic banks as at the end of 2003 amounted to $ 2.7 trillion. According to various estimates, this corresponds to about one-third of the world’s total private wealth managed abroad. Last, but not least, the banking and the insurance sectors combined employ approximately 185,000 people, the equivalent of 6 percent of total Swiss employment, whereas the fiscal contribution of the banking sector alone amounts to about 13 percent of total tax revenues.