Chairperson, clearly it's uncontroversial because it is a step forward but, in expressing appreciation for the various comments made and the detail made in the interventions by members across the floor, let me just remind us of a few issues.
The first of these is in respect of what is raised by the hon Bhoola in particular. Banks intermediate, and there's a rationale that it has to intermediate, between people who deposit and people who borrow, and if there are fewer depositors than borrowers, then banks will charge. It's a rationale of intermediation. I think it's one of the issues that we must always be mindful of. Banks don't generate money in and of themselves, unless there's a crisis and you have central bank intervention as you have seen in the last two weeks or so.
One of the things about South Africa is just the amount of change that we have lived through over the past 13 years. The Revised Framework on International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards, known as Basel II, comes at a particular point, but I think the changes are manifest across the entire banking sector including the issues of access.
There are now three million or so South Africans who have access to banking services that previously they didn't have. It might still be elementary at the level of Mzansi accounts and so on, but it is important that first- level access is there and is part of this general change.
Also, in respect of that which banks report to and the respective Financial Services Charter obligations, they have to report on access lending to small business enterprise development and a series of other changes that are now there.
I hope the hon Gibson will remain an active part of the Portfolio Committee on Finance. Within the next few weeks, I imagine Mr Godongwana, on behalf of the Financial Sector Charter Council, will report to the committee. It's very important that Parliament engages with the progress that we can measure there.
In respect of the financial crisis, I want to comment on a very good article in one of the newspapers, yesterday. It started with the story ``Now I have less in my pension fund because the white boys in Albuquerque were lending to ninjas, no income, no job and no assets''.
When you don't have adequate banking supervision you have that kind of problem, where some institutions have been able to take horrible loans - unsecured loans - package them as something else, get them triple-A rated by rating agencies and then sell them onto derivative funds. What you've seen over the past two weeks has been a knock-on effect. So, part of the Basel II, too, and part of the changes we are talking of ensure that banks must hold capital against risk.
That first pillar is so important because it's by that introduction, hopefully, that the largest economy in the world, the United States, will get to the point where they, too, implement Basel II at some time in the not too distant future, because what we've seen is the contagion effect of poor supervision in some of these institutions.
Here we'd like to hold our heads up high and mark this as another important step forward in the security of the deposits of savers, because that sends the best possible signals about savings and investment in our economy.
Thank you very much, Chairperson, and thanks to all parties for their support. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.
Bill read a second time.