The government has also endorsed this move to adopt a FIT regime as stated in its Vision 2025 policy document. In order to successfully implement the FIT framework, we have formulated a road map outlining several milestones to be completed by the government and the Central Bank, including the necessary  3  legislative, institutional and operational changes. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also recognised our move towards FIT by giving us necessary technical assistance on capacity building. The Central Bank accommodated greater flexibility in the exchange rate in 2017 by allowing market forces to determine the rate. The market reacted positively to this policy initiative by reviving the spot market. The Central Bank continued to absorb foreign exchange from the domestic interbank foreign exchange market in order to build up the quantum of nonborrowed foreign exchange reserves. This move also helped to smoothen the exchange rate behaviour. There were even some instances of appreciation of the rupee in 2017, indicating significant inflows to the foreign exchange market. Sri Lanka also received the fourth tranche of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of the IMF in December 2017. A total of US dollars 759.9 million has been received so far. This confirms Sri Lanka’s satisfactory performance in achieving IMF-EFF targets during 2017 in terms of specified performance criteria and certain structural benchmarks. Earnings from exports increased owing to the recovery in key export markets, the Central Bank policy of maintaining exchange rate flexibility, conducive external trade policies and improved macroeconomic conditions of the country.

There is still uncertainty about the estimate of the pandemic impact on the Russian economy’s potential, especially amid the current worsening of the epidemiological situation. Given such highly uneven trends in the economy and price movements, we will need to carry out an additional analysis of how the situation will be changing and whether we still have some room for cutting the key rate when making our key rate decisions in the future. It is hard to affirm this now. If the impact of one-off factors wanes quickly and inflation expectations reverse, it is entirely possible that there may be grounds for a further reduction in the key rate, yet this will not necessarily be the case. I would also like to emphasise that it is now crucial to maintain the robustness of the monetary policy to various scenarios. Our policy is aimed at keeping inflation close to 4% under any scenario of future developments. We are ending this year with another important step in our communication. We are starting to release our regular report ‘Regional Economy: Commentaries by Bank of Russia Main Branches’ on the Bank of Russia website. This report is prepared by our regional branches for the Board of Directors’ key rate meetings and will contain the most up-to-date information on the situation in the Russian regions. When preparing for decision-making, we usually consider economic trends in Russia in general and across regions and assess both statistics and survey findings. This helps us better understand the economic situation and its specifics.