from these decades is that bringing inflation back down again after it becomes ingrained in people ’ s expectations is very costly and almost certainly involves a recession. this next graph shows the inflation and unemployment rates during the disinflation episodes in australia and the united states after the period of high inflation ( graph 2 ). in both cases, bringing inflation back down required high interest rates and was associated with a deep recession and a rise in the unemployment rate of at least 5 percentage points. the high unemployment then persisted for years and left deep scars in the labour market and damaged our communities. it was very costly. r e s e r v e b a n k o f au s t r a l i a graph 2 disinflationary episodes * % united states % australia inflation unemployment * shading indicates labour market downturns, from trough to peak in unemployment rate. sources : abs ; rba ; refinitiv this experience lies behind the determination of the world ’ s central banks to ensure that the current period of high inflation is only temporary. the evidence shows that economies work better with low inflation and that once inflation becomes entrenched, it is very costly to stamp it out. it is for these reasons that the reserve bank board is resolute in its determination to return inflation to target and we will do what is necessary to achieve that. our central forecast is that inflation will peak later this year at around 8 per cent, and then decline gradually over the next couple of years to be a little above 3 per cent by the end of 2024 ( graph 3 ). graph 3 headline inflation * year - ended % % 70 per cent interval 90 per cent interval - 2 - 2 * confidence intervals reflect rba forecast errors since 1993. sources : abs ; rba there are a number of factors that lie behind this expected decline in inflation. the first is that the covid disruptions to supply are being resolved : delivery times and shipping costs have declined and the pressure on goods prices is abating. the second is that commodity prices have stabilised and, in many cases, have declined to be back around their levels at the beginning of the year ; in time, the effect of this will be evident in consumer prices. and third, the increase in interest rates here and around the world will result in slower growth in aggregate demand. in time, this means less pressure on capacity and lower inflation. as always, there is uncertainty around this outlook. we can ’ t rule out

- off in decision - making. 10. therefore, we will study the benefits and challenges of different architectures for the distribution of general purpose cbdcs through commercial banks / payment service providers in our upcoming general purpose cbdc project, called project aurum. specifically we will look into 2 architectural models, namely the hybrid cbdc and private cbdc - backed stablecoins. in parallel, we are working with the people ’ s bank of china on a technical pilot testing of using e - cny for cross - border retail payments in hong kong. we are extremely excited about these initiatives on cbdcs on multiple fronts, and i would be very happy to share more findings with you all as we make further progress. improving financial intermediation by using commercial data 11. another big area in fintech is the use of data. it is now already a cliche to say data is the new oil in the digital era. but it is a reality that those who possess the most data and the ability to harvest useful information from them can profit tremendously. as of now such competence resides mostly in big internet platform companies. however, many data subjects have no way to make better use of their own digital footprints, or data about themselves currently scattered in various different platforms, for their own benefit. 12. for example, smes are facing the long - standing problem of having limited access to finance. conventional credit scoring approaches are not particularly favorable to smes because they often lack auditable operating data, which large corporates have. this disadvantage hinders not only the growth of sme businesses, but also the stability of our job markets and economic growth. worse still, the blow of the pandemic has put the survival of many smes at stake, and their need for financing is stronger than ever. so is there a way to better empower data subjects to make better use of their own data for their own benefit? 13. with this objective in mind, we are expanding our financial infrastructure to enable data to take the centre stage. our recently launched initiative, the commercial data interchange ( cdi ), is a centralized platform which allows data owners to share their digital footprints voluntarily with banks through data providers in an efficient and secure manner. with a more substantial body of up - to - date and authenticated data shared by smes ( such as monthly or even daily trading and turnover statistics ), banks could use data analytics to perform more accurate credit assessments, and then provide more tailored services