practices differ, i said earlier there is not yet a clear convergence of the practice. nonconvergence of practice can be seen clearly from the current practice of the eight major central banks. i want to end my remark today by sharing with you my thought on how to approach transparency in monetary policy. the first is that transparency is not just a fad. it is something that will stay. and as organizations making public policy decisions, transparency is of most importance to central banks as a way of being accountable. also, transparency is important to central banks for building credibility and for gaining public acceptance of their policy. second, in moving towards greater transparency, an approach based on sequencing or gradualism looks to me to be better and more efficient than a big - bang approach. the sequencing, in my view, should focus initially on building minimum critical components of core transparency, and then moving on to greater transparency in selected areas when ready. along this line, the sequence could be first data dissemination, followed by establishing a structured and open decision - making process, then followed by publishing economic forecasts and then moving on to providing data on the central bank ’ s operations. this is essentially the sequence that the bank of thailand has been following. and finally, efforts to strengthen disclosure policy should focus on having a well - defined work process as well as capacity building. this is because, in the end, the abilities to explain our actions will be most crucial. such ability rests solely on how good and how knowledgeable we are as central bankers. so, it links back to the needs for central banks to continue building our own capacities and capabilities both in economic research and in other areas of financial markets. let me stop here. i hope this brief remark has been useful to the seminar. thank you.

( 2 ) explaining clearly the framework of monetary policy and its operating procedures ; ( 3 ) having regular economic data release ; ( 4 ) making known clearly the decision - making process of monetary policy which includes who make the decisions, how often, the timetable of meetings, and the dissemination process to announce the policy decisions ; ( 5 ) publishing timely economic reports to explain views on the economy and risks as well as the rationale for their monetary policy decisions ; and ( 6 ) the readiness of central banks to communicate with markets either through the media and public addresses or appearing before public or congressional committees. in my view, these are the core areas where transparency in monetary policy is most important and they are the areas that are being increasingly practiced by central banks around the world. the bank of thailand, if i may add, is transparent in all of these six areas. as i noted, although the areas for transparency are well identified, the details and the practices adopted by central banks do differ and are not uniform. for example, while most central banks would have low and stable inflation as an objective of monetary policy, practice differs on how that objective is defined. this is to say some central banks announce numerical inflation targets and some don ’ t. this, of course, depends on the underlying monetary policy framework. in our case, the bank of thailand adopts inflation targeting as its monetary policy framework, so the bank announces a numerical inflation target - that is core inflation to be kept between 0 - 3. 5 percent averaging over a quarter. some central banks publish detailed economic and inflation forecasts to guide the markets about their understandings of the economies and the risks that the economies face. the others do this but not in great detail. on this, the bank of thailand is in the former group. we publish assessments of the economy, the economic forecast, and the inflation outlook in the form of a quarterly inflation report. there is increasingly call for central banks to provide data ex post on their market operations and intervention. at this time, most central banks, i think, have not responded systematically to this aspect of transparency. a number of central banks publish minutes and voting records of their monetary policy meetings with a lag, but the majority still don ’ t. the main reason is the risk that doing so could undermine the decisionmaking process where frankness and openness are required. having detailed minutes and voting records might encourage the attending members to read out their statements rather than to get involved in detailed discussions. because the