Mr. Dick Spring:

It would be both in the sense that there is a lot of work in preparing for meetings, including briefing oneself. Then there are meetings and also there is a lot of work currently in terms of what I would call continuous education and training which we are now undergoing. I will give an example. Last week, we had our board risk meeting at 2 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, which lasted for four hours. We then had a working dinner with the board of the bank. We started our board meeting at 8 o'clock on Thursday morning and that lasted until 2.30 p.m. We then went into a training session which lasted until 6.30 p.m. that day. On Friday we resumed the training session which lasted from 8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. That is the bank's working week and there are obviously other meetings in between.

The figure of 40 days was indicated as the Central Bank's requirement. One would want to commit oneself to being available, which I was in a position to do. I saw, however, that there was extra work involved and I put it in writing to the chairman that I was quite prepared to do extra days.