monetary policy committee of the bank of england. according to the bank of england act, 1998, the boe is supposed to " publish minutes of the mpc meeting before the end of the period of 6 weeks beginning with the day of the meeting. " until october 1998 the minutes were published about five weeks after the meeting. the monetary policy committee announced in 1998 that it would publish the minutes of its monthly meetings on the wednesday of the second week after the meetings take place. apart from the minutes, they publish the voting pattern of the individual members as well. besides, central banks are increasingly learning to communicate ‘ perception of uncertainty ’, as different from ‘ ambiguity ’. in terms of communication there are various ways to tell the public that ‘ we do not know for certain ’, which are clearly preferable to couching a statement in ambiguous language. illustratively, the boe publishes its growth or inflation forecasts with a differing margin of error – what is popularly called the “ fan chart ”. the fan chart with its increasing lighter shade ( at the outward direction ) is a mode which clearly communicates the extent of uncertainty and the degree of ignorance of the forecaster. 4 / 9 another important hallmark of modern communication is the emerging roles of web - sites and wire agencies. while the speed of communication is still slightly slower than light, wire agencies put the communication from the central banks on an almost real time basis. this has great ramifications on the transmission of news and formation of expectation in the financial markets. having delineated the general principles let me now turn to the indian specifics on central bank communication. iii. communication in rbi i have already pointed out that more complex is the mandate for the central bank more is the necessity of communication. the indian case would perhaps approximate that of a complex objective. after all, apart from pursuing monetary policy, financial stability is one of the overriding concerns of the rbi. within the objective of monetary policy, both control of inflation and providing adequate credit to the productive sectors of the economy so as to foster growth are equally important. this apart, reserve bank acts as a banking regulator, debt manager, government debt market regulator and currency issuer. faced with such multiple tasks and complex mandate, there is an utmost necessity of clearer communication on the part of the reserve bank of india. what do we need to communicate? in a central bank, there is necessity of three kinds of communication, viz., ( a ) policy measures, (

wage determination in norway. in order to maintain competitiveness, wage growth in norway had to be on a par with that of trading partners. over time, growth in real wages must be consistent with growth in labour productivity. an inflation target of 2½ per cent and trend productivity growth of around 2 per cent, according to updated national accounts figures, imply annual nominal wage growth of about 4½ per cent. these figures are consistent with developments in the 1990s, when wage growth averaged 4½ per cent. this resulted in an inflation rate of 2½ per cent. the krone exchange rate was stable. the output gap shows the difference between actual production ( gdp ) and trend growth - estimated at close to 2. 5 per cent in norway. at the beginning of the 1990s, the economy was in a deep recession. production was well below capacity. when growth in the economy picked up, capacity utilisation increased. the output gap closed around 1996. from then on, costs increased and the rise in prices for goods and services produced for the norwegian market accelerated. the upturn peaked in 1997, with gdp growth approaching 5 per cent. the pace of such a strong upturn could not be sustained. in 1997 and 1998 the economy shifted from an upturn with high growth rates to an expansion with lower growth but low unemployment, labour shortages in many sectors and strong growth in labour costs. the period of strong expansion has ebbed away in the course of the past year. winter 2002 marked the turnaround in the norwegian economy. growth in the mainland economy is now lower. unemployment is approaching the average for the 1990s. industrial leaders are pessimistic. companies report a decline in production, employment and orders for both the export and domestic markets. many companies have relocated or have plans to relocate all or some of their production operations abroad. in particular, enterprises producing capital goods are experiencing problems. the number of bankruptcies has increased sharply. the number of bankruptcy petitions is the highest in nine years. if we disregard personal bankruptcies, there has been an increase of 32 per cent from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2003 - 200 more than a year ago. the largest increase in the first quarter is in retail trade and the property management and commercial services sector, while manufacturing and the construction sector accounted for the largest increase in the previous quarter. the number of bankruptcies increased in all counties compared with 2002, with the sharpest increase in hordaland, buskerud and oslo (