philip lowe : remarks at reserve bank board dinner remarks by mr philip lowe, governor of the reserve bank of australia, reserve bank board dinner, melbourne, 4 april 2017. * * * good evening. on behalf of the reserve bank board i would like to warmly welcome you all to this dinner. we are very pleased that leaders from the worlds of politics, academia and the community sector, as well as from business, have been able to join us tonight. having leaders join us from right across the community is important to us, as the decisions made by the reserve bank board and by the bank affect all australians. price stability, financial stability, sustainable growth and employment, and a well - functioning payments system matter to all of us. each of these is important to our collective prosperity. so thank you all for being here tonight. this is the first of these dinners that i have had the honour of hosting. a particular privilege is to be able to do so in melbourne, where we had our board meeting today at our offices on the corner of exhibition and collins streets. four of our nine board members are based in melbourne, with carol schwartz recently joining cath tanna, kathryn fagg and ian harper on the reserve bank board. it was more than 30 years ago that we last had four residents of melbourne on this board and, on that occasion, it was only for a very short period. at our meeting today, the board decided to leave the cash rate unchanged at 1. 50 per cent. as usual, the reasons for our decision were set out in the statement issued shortly after the meeting. i don ’ t propose to run through all the issues that were considered by the board. but there are two issues that i would like to talk about. the first is the improvement in the global economy. business and consumer sentiment have lifted in many countries and global trade and industrial production have picked up as well. commodity prices are also higher than they were for most of last year. headline inflation rates have returned to near normal levels in many countries, boosted by higher oil prices. and the point of maximum global monetary stimulus looks to have passed. given all this, at the g20 meetings that the treasurer and i attended in baden - baden in germany two weeks ago, the tone was much more positive than it had been at previous meetings. encouragingly, over recent months forecasts for global growth have been revised up, not down as has been the case for the past four years. so this is a

guy debelle : developments in global fx markets and challenges in currency internationalisation from an australian perspective speech by mr guy debelle, assistant governor ( financial markets ) of the reserve bank of australia, at the rmb fx forum ( appearance via video link ), beijing, 18 may 2016. * * * thanks to david halperin and eden hatzvi for their help in compiling these remarks. i am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak at this event today. australia takes a keen interest in the ongoing process of internationalisation and liberalisation of the renminbi ( rmb ). i am sure you will hear many interesting perspectives on that subject today. i would like to talk about three things. first, i will talk a little about the use of the rmb in australia. second, i will talk about the rmb ’ s increasing role in the global economy and relate that to the work i am leading on the global code of conduct for the foreign exchange market. finally, i will provide an australian perspective on currency internationalisation and capital account liberalisation, reflecting on the challenges that emerged as australia went through this process in the late 1970s / early1980s. 1 turning to the use of the rmb in australia. first, from the rba ’ s own point of view, we have invested a portion of our foreign exchange reserves in rmb since 2013. this has allowed us to get direct insight into the way the fx and bond markets function in china, and has also allowed us to experience first - hand the benefits of the ongoing liberalisation that has occurred in recent years. in june 2015, the people ’ s bank of china ( pbc ) reported that foreign central banks and monetary authorities held over rmb650 billion in rmb denominated assets and that has almost certainly grown larger today. the rba and pbc also established a bilateral currency swap in 2012 for rmb200 billion that was renewed last year. the swap line highlights and supports the growing financial linkages between the two economies as well as trade and investment. to help further remove possible impediments to the use of rmb in australia, an official rmb clearing bank began operation in sydney in february 2015. in addition, australia was granted an rmb50 billion rqfii quota for portfolio investments. finally, for a number of years now, the australian dollar has been directly traded against the rmb in the onshore fx market. this has allowed for the growing