declined. between then and early november, the exchange rate depreciated by around 5 per cent in tradeweighted terms and against the us dollar. it is reasonable to attribute the bulk of this depreciation to the growing expectation of the package announced in november. longer - term yields have risen a little since the november board meeting as has the exchange rate, largely due to the news about vaccines. but i would argue they are both lower than they would be absent the november policy package. https : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2020 / sp - dg - 2020 - 11 - 24. html 11 / 14 11 / 24 / 2020 monetary policy in 2020 | speeches | rba graph 8 10 - year australian government bond spreads australian yield minus select international bond yields bps bps uk canada nz us - 50 - 50 - 100 - 100 j f m a m j j a s o n d sources : bloomberg ; yieldbroker let me remind you briefly about how the bond purchases occur. the bond purchase program comprises $ 80 billion of ags and $ 20 billion of semis. any purchases to maintain the 3 - year yield target will be in addition to this. the bank buys bonds in the secondary market. we announce our intentions at 11. 15 am on mondays and thursdays for the australian government bond auctions, both for the 3 - year target and the ags bond purchase program ( though this does not completely preclude purchasing bonds for the 3 - year target on other days if necessary ), and on wednesdays for the semis bond purchase program. the bond purchase program comprises bonds beyond the 3 - year yield target up to the longest maturity in the 10 - year futures basket. we alternate purchases between the shorter and longer end of that maturity spectrum. the semis are purchased across 3 auctions with the aim of buying broadly in line with the size of their respective bond programs. in the afternoon, we take bids in a 5 - minute window on the auction platform. we accept the bids that are cheapest relative to the mid - market price for the relevant bond. this determines the final composition of the bonds we purchase each auction, with the caveat that for the states we aim to achieve an overall allocation across the purchase program broadly consistent with the size of their bond programs. we aim to exclude bond lines from the weekly auctions that are being tapped in the same week or are recently issued new bonds. the results of

. the second risk that i mentioned earlier was a boom and bust in asset prices. i do not think this is a serious risk at the moment, although it was not that long ago that it posed a threat. in 2003, we had both household borrowing and house prices growing at over 20 per cent, and that was on top of several earlier years of strong rises. if 2004 had produced another year of 20 per cent growth, then we would have had the makings of a serious boom and bust situation. as it was, 2004 was a very good year in this respect as borrowing slowed and house prices retreated for most of the year. growth in borrowing seems to have now settled for the time being at a rate of about 13 per cent per annum, and house prices may have risen in the december quarter of 2004. it is too early yet to know where either borrowing or house prices are headed. the third risk i mentioned was the balance of payments, where the current account deficit is estimated to be 6¾ per cent of gdp. this is not very different to the level reached on a number of occasions over the past two decades, but it is disappointing given that it has occurred against the background of a reasonably buoyant world economy and a strong rise in the terms of trade. strong domestic demand pushing up imports is part of the story, but the bigger part is the failure of the volume of exports to rise sufficiently to take advantage of the strong world demand. we have recently analysed this at some length, and presented our conclusions in our quarterly statement. i will be happy to talk about this later in more detail. but while the balance of payments result is disappointing, it is not of itself a reason for a monetary policy response. at this point, i usually look back at the forecasts i gave the committee last time to see how the outlook has changed. i also make a couple of new forecasts. on economic growth, last year was one of the few examples where the growth rate we now expect will be well below what we had forecast. in the middle of last year we were forecasting 3¾ per cent growth for the year to the december quarter 2004 ; now we think that when we receive the december quarter national accounts next month, they will show a growth rate of not much more than 2 per cent. how do we explain the difference? one explanation would emphasise that the national accounts are showing a picture of the economy which is considerably weaker than that shown by most other