life to this plan and transform our organization into one that will make the filipino people proud. let me also acknowledge the significant contributions made by our consultants in crafting the medium - term plan and in the implementation of our projects. to the corporate planning office, i thank you for all your efforts and i wish you good luck in meeting the challenges ahead as you continue to spearhead the strategic management initiatives in the bank. when i turn over the reigns of leading this organization in july this year, i am confident that the bank ’ s management team shall carry on what we have started, strengthen what we have put in place, and sustain the gains of our collective efforts. for all your support and cooperation, thank you and i wish you all the best.

of economic resources. what a central bank requires of the fixed - income market is therefore not all that different from what society in general requires. if the fixed - income market is to perform its important function, more is needed than participants who set prices for the various assets. there must also be participants who trade actively at those prices. neither must the counterparty risks be perceived as unduly high because that may deter participants from trading. moreover, the market must be capable of handling large volumes without this by itself having an appreciable effect on prices. in other words, the market should be adequately liquid. why is liquidity important for monetary policy? the answer is that in a liquid market, relevant news shows up quickly in interest rates. an adjustment of the riksbank ’ s repo rate, for example, has a rapid pass - through to the short market rates, as well as to somewhat longer rates. this applies, of course, in so far as the repo rate adjustment takes the market by surprise. if market participants instead understand how the riksbank interprets new information in the form of macroeconomic outcomes, they can draw conclusions about the riksbank ’ s future actions. news is then reflected in the formation of interest rates at the time when the macroeconomic outcomes are known. the relevant interest rates also react quickly to various forms of information from the riksbank. somewhat longer interest rates may be affected, for instance, when we publish a repo rate forecast, a so - called interest - rate path that presents the riksbank ’ s assessment of the future development of the policy rate. the conditions for good market liquidity include low transaction costs, management of counterparty risks and market transparency. in practice, access to information in most markets – including the credit market – usually differs between buyers and sellers. this is commonly referred to as information asymmetry and implies that the seller of a product knows more about it than the buyer does. a good example is the used car market. in the credit market it is commonly the borrower who knows more about his own situation than the lender does. one approach to dealing with this problem is to have a company ’ s creditworthiness assessed by an independent organisation. a credit rating can aid an investor because it would cost too much for the investor to analyse every company whose securities might be of interest. moreover, market efficiency can be enhanced by businesses that are dependent on income from the market and therefore