quality content with dynamic and arrangement with the imf. interactive features. we would also continue to strengthen at the same time, continuing the the technical capability, particularly with practice that has been followed in the regard to the compilation past, we intend to make monetary policy methodologies of macroeconomic announcements according to an statistics in line with international advance announcement calendar. the standards. this will promote sound calendar for 2017 is set out below. central bank of sri lanka – road map 2017 monetary policy announcements in 2017 expending us dollars 4. 0 billion of scarce external reserves in a futile attempt to 7 february, tuesday 24 march, friday 9 may, tuesday 27 june, tuesday defend the external value of the rupee through market intervention. there was a similar experience in 2015 when the currency depreciated by 6. 5 per cent after spending us dollars 2. 1 billion of our reserves. wasting large amounts of 3 august, thursday the country ’ s external reserves, much of 26 september, tuesday it borrowed, in a vain effort to defend 7 november, tuesday 28 december, thursday the currency, which has to be ultimately depreciated anyway, is clearly unsustainable. it is time to stop this pattern and commence building up of external reserves through sustainable volatile global market conditions and sri foreign exchange inflows. lanka ’ s vulnerability as a twin deficit country underscore the vital importance the impact of global developments, of having a flexible exchange rate policy such as brexit, recent presidential to adjust to external pressures. recent elections in the united states ( us ) as experience has clearly demonstrated well as interest rate hikes by the us that it is unsustainable to maintain an federal reserve, the forthcoming overvalued exchange rate at the elections in france and germany in expense of external reserves. a smooth europe, the projected slowdown in the market based exchange rate would chinese economy, as well as economic prevent highly disruptive adjustments conditions in sri lanka ’ s major trading after a period of stable rates artificially partners, including india, japan, russia maintained by continuous intervention and the middle east, will also have a by the central bank, as experienced in significant influence on the domestic the 2011 - 12 period when the currency economy. depreciated by around 14 per cent after central bank of sri lanka – road map 2017 trends in oil prices and international notably agriculture and power capital flows, following the generation. normalisation of interest rates in the us are likely to be particularly important

policy tools that we deployed to address the great recession? while i believe that influencing short - term interest rates should continue to be our primary monetary policy lever in normal times, our unconventional policy tools will likely be needed again should some future economic downturn drive short - term interest rates back to their effective lower bound. indeed, empirical analysis suggests that the neutral federal funds rate — defined as the level of the federal funds rate that is neither expansionary nor contractionary when the economy is operating near its potential — is much lower than in previous decades. consequently, the probability that short - term interest rates may need to be reduced to their effective lower bound at some point is uncomfortably high, even in the absence of a major financial and economic crisis. i will return to the question about the future of our various policy tools, but first i would like to review our experience this decade, which i view as instructive for addressing that question. meeting the challenge of providing additional accommodation a substantial body of evidence suggests that the u. s. economy is much stronger today than it would have been without the unconventional monetary policy tools deployed by the federal reserve in response to the great recession. two key tools were large - scale asset purchases 1 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches and forward guidance about our intentions for the future path of short - term interest rates. the rationale for those tools was straightforward : given our inability to meaningfully lower short - term interest rates after they reached near - zero in late 2008, the fomc used increasingly explicit forward rate guidance and asset purchases to apply downward pressure on longer - term interest rates, which were still well above zero. longer - term interest rates reflect, in part, financial market participants ’ expectations of the future path of short - term interest rates. as a result, fomc communications that affect those expectations — such as the enhanced forward rate guidance provided in our post - meeting statements in the aftermath of the great recession — can affect longer - term interest rates. 1 in addition, longer - term interest rates include a term premium, which is the compensation demanded by investors for bearing the interest rate risk associated with longer - term securities. when the federal reserve buys longer - term securities in the open market, the remaining stock of securities available for purchase by the public declines, which pushes the prices of those securities up and thus depresses their yields by lowering the term premiums embedded in those yields. 2 several studies have found that our forward rate guidance and asset purchases did app