In any economy, the real sector is the engine of growth, development, and job creation. However, to perform its role in an optimal manner, it needs an adequate supply of financial instruments that allows people and enterprises to save and borrow money, and buy insurance. When people save, they transfer money from today to tomorrow; as they borrow, they transfer money from tomorrow to today; and when buying insurance, transfer money from the good to the bad states of the world. Without these instruments, the economy becomes a primitive barter system in which people are reduced to subsistence living because they need to produce all of their requirements from the physical capital and labour that they own with no hope of specialisation or of accelerated growth.
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