stephen s poloz : release of the monetary policy report opening statement by mr stephen s poloz, governor of the bank of canada, at the press conference following the release of the monetary policy report, ottawa, ontario, 20 january 2016. * * * good morning, and thank you for coming today. let me begin as usual with a few remarks around the issues that were most important to the governing council ’ s deliberations. at the global level, 2015 was a little disappointing as the world dealt with diverging economic prospects and shifting terms of trade, but we expect gradual strengthening to resume in 2016. there has been considerable attention paid to recent developments in china, and this has added to volatility in global financial and commodity markets. however, it was governing council ’ s judgment that china will remain on its transition to a more balanced and sustainable growth path, from around 7 per cent annual growth to around 6 per cent. volatility in equity markets is, of course, not always a reflection of weak economic fundamentals. nevertheless, the global equity - market correction may inject a further measure of caution into business decision making. our global outlook remains positive, albeit cautiously so. governing council believes that the u. s. economy remains solid – the fourth quarter of 2015 was soft, but we believe this to be largely temporary for reasons we discuss in the monetary policy report ( mpr ). solid fundamentals, including strong employment gains, high consumer confidence and very strong investment outside the energy sector should see u. s. growth return to close to 2 1 / 2 per cent this year. not coincidentally, the canadian economy appears to have stalled in the fourth quarter. there were some temporary factors at work for us, too, but the main issue was slower exports to the u. s. we expect growth to pick up to 1 per cent in the first quarter, along with the u. s., and then to move back above 2 per cent for the remainder of the year. our new annual growth forecast for 2016 is 1. 4 per cent ; however, much of the downward revision in that figure is because of the weakness we saw in the final quarter of last year. on a fourthquarter - over - fourth - quarter basis, growth for 2016 is projected to be a more solid 1. 9 per cent. in its deliberations, governing council focused mainly on the implications of lower prices for oil and other commodities for canada and for monetary policy. this shock is

would remain within the projected ceiling and thereby contribute to the anticipated drop in inflation. in view of these expectations, the bank of zambia will continue to implement appropriate monetary policy aimed at containing the growth in reserve money and broad money within the projections. as part of the outlook, there are two important events that will be forthcoming. these are : the upcoming imf mission • we wish to inform you that the imf mission will be in the country during mid - april to assess progress made against the staff monitored programme ( smp ) with a view to consider zambia ’ s return to a prgf. it is therefore, our hope that nothing will be done in the market to reverse the many successes that we have achieved thus far because we all need the programme which will not only lead to the country reaching the much anticipated completion point under the enhanced hipc initiative, but also bring along other benefits, such as, increased supply of foreign exchange in the economy. the country assistance strategy ( cas ) • in addition, a country assistance strategy ( cas ) for zambia was recently approved by the world bank board. here too a lot of praise was given to our achievements but with caution as more work needs to be done in our economic programme. the approval of cas for zambia means that some substantial funding will be released beginning soon and will spread over a relatively stretched period. this will help ease the situation given the resource constraints that the country is facing, especially to fund capital and related projects.