. monetary policy ladies and gentlemen, let me turn to my last subject, that of monetary policy. 8. the mpc ’ s ultimate mandate is to safeguard the macroeconomic and financial stability of the country. in the last few years, the bank of thailand has maintained an accommodative monetary policy stance. mindful of imminent downside risks to growth, the policy rate was cut three times in the mpc meetings of may and november 2013, and again in march 2014. in these three meetings, the mpc were of the view that the reductions of policy interest rate were necessary to ensure sufficient support to the domestic economy. the current real policy interest rate, which is now in a negative territory, aims to help alleviate the financial burden on households and corporations, allowing them to withstand short - term shocks. 9. however, as the current policy interest rate is already low, further easing would not be without concerns. in the last meeting in april 2014, the mpc decided to maintain the policy at 2. 00 percent. the rationales behind this decision were that the current monetary policy stance was accommodative enough to support the economy as the prolonged political uncertainties were the main cause for risk to growth, not the financial conditions. meanwhile, room for further policy accommodation was diminishing, and any possible side effects of keeping the interest rate low for a protracted period, needed to be taken into account. 10. i would like to end my remarks by thanking you all again for your contributions to the thai economy and let me assure you that the bank of thailand will continue our works to ensure a stable and resilient financial and economic environment, conducive to economic growth of the country. thank you very much. bis central bankers ’ speeches

proportion of their payments early in the day to provide liquidity for the market. we will monitor flows to assess whether such “ affirmative action ” is necessary in australia. it will, of course, be essential that most high - value payments are settled real - time when the new system is available. anything less would defeat the purpose for which it is being built. there have been suggestions that some banks might by - pass rtgs by using lower cost ( but higher risk ) channels, such as the direct entry system which is designed for high volumes of small payments and settles on a net deferred basis. if this were to happen, we would have to consider what incentives or sanctions were needed to ensure that high - value payments travel along the rtgs path. rtgs will not, of itself, remove the risks that banks incur in international payments - in particular, the risks arising from non - synchronisation of payments and receipts in foreign exchange transactions. having rtgs for domestic transactions is, however, a necessary step toward tackling this. we ’ re currently investigating the extent of australian banks ’ settlement risks in their foreign exchange business. this is the next major frontier for risk reduction in banking. operational risk and year 2000 as their business becomes more complex and diverse, banks are increasingly reliant on computers for information - processing and control. as a result, they are exposed to various kinds of operational risk. for a bank active in derivatives trading, a breakdown in computer systems for even a relatively short time could be disastrous - preventing it from monitoring its changing market positions and disrupting its capacity to trade and to settle outstanding transactions. i recently heard a keen observer predict that the next big banking disaster would come from a ( hypothetical ) major international bank losing track of its derivatives positions for 24 hours. to protect against such events, banks invest heavily in the integrity of their computer systems, as well as in back - up and disaster recovery facilities. the rba is, of course, providing such back - up for the core of the rtgs system. the year 2000 problem poses a rather novel sort of operational risk because it is the result of past programming decisions which have produced the classic “ unintended consequence ”. basically, the risk is computer confusion and malfunction when the year identified in programming as “ 99 ” clicks over to “ 00 ”. the upshot for australian banks is the need to spend big sums on replacing or reprogramming their date - dependent computer systems