. your presence will enhance the discussions and will ensure that relevant issues are tabled and that they are adequately addressed. your agenda for the next three days is quite rich. this could be a very significant three days for the sadc integration project. you may look back at this workshop, when the project is successfully completed, and appreciate some of the preparatory work that you would have completed over the next 3 days, and i am sure be proud to have been part of it. i wish you well in your discussions and that you have a successful workshop. thank you. bis central bankers ’ speeches

month. the consolidated deposit liabilities of the banks, along with the value of notes and coin in circulation, are summarised in the monetary aggregates labelled m1a, m1, m2 and m3. in the past, the change in the broad monetary aggregate m3, relative to a pre - announced desired or guideline rate of change, was used for policy making. this approach to monetary policy making was based on the assumption that there was a fairly stable short - run relationship between changes in m3 and changes in nominal aggregate spending. unfortunately this relationship became less reliable over time. as a result the reserve bank started to monitor a wider variety of economic indicators and, from the beginning of this year, shifted to formal inflation targeting. at present, monetary policy decisions are anchored directly to the achievement of a specified average inflation rate of between 3 and 6 % in 2002. it is important to note that monetary policy decision making is not an exact science, and possibly never will be, even with the most accurate macroeconomic measurements imaginable. this is why the bank cannot base a policy decision on the deviation of a rather uncertain inflation forecast from a targeted future rate. but neither can policy decisions be a matter of sweeping, broad impressions based upon anecdotal evidence and partial information. what the members of the monetary policy committee of the bank do is to make the best professionally informed analysis they can of all the sources of information at their disposal, relating to every important market in the economy. then they constantly review and modify their judgements, in the light of new information as it becomes available. policy decisions are highly complex and the monetary policy committee does not take them lightly. decisions are definitely not two - dimensional and take far more factors into consideration than an inflation and growth perspective. the committee uses a vast array of official economic statistics and financial market data, and all the publicly available and some private surveys and commentaries, to make a decision about the monetary policy stance. what is more, the bank openly releases the facts as they are available to us, as well as the analyses made by the monetary policy committee and by the research staff, regularly through the statements of the committee and in the publication of the quarterly bulletin and the annual economic report. all policy decisions are nevertheless always taken with a view to achieving and maintaining financial stability. 6. concluding remarks some commentators have rather dated views that monetary policy decisions should be aimed at maximising economic growth in the short run. i believe that the primary role of monetary policy is