always concern about the balance between politics and economics. in my view for much of our post independent years – i ’ m not putting this on one party or the other party, or one government or the other – but if you look back from 1948, for most of the time, politics has trumped economics. it is our job to convince our politicians that good economics is good politics. we need to, as a central bank, to get away from this cycle of stop – go policies, of creating artificial booms through misaligned policies. we need to set a good framework, as i said, for the economy. we have a representative democracy. the people elected by the people – the government – of course have sovereignty reposed in them. however, the monetary law act sets about some very specific responsibilities for the central bank. and it is up to us to fulfill those responsibilities in a very technocratic, objective and free way. that is not to say that we should be criticizing the government of the day. that is not our business. but there are channels through which we can give independent advice to the government discretely. i am very keen and i have spoken to our leaders too about this, that the central bank does its work independently and in a technical way and discretely advices the government about what we think is the best way forward for those segments of policy and practice for which the central bank has responsibility. so, i need your cooperation. thank you, thank you very much. bis central bankers ’ speeches

richard byles : jamaica's recent inflation performance and outlook monetary policy statement by mr richard byles, governor of the bank of jamaica, to the standing finance committee of parliament, kingston, 14 december 2022. * * * thank you for the opportunity to have bank of the jamaica report to this honourable house on its recent stewardship of monetary policy. i also take this opportunity to wish all the members of this honourable house and your families a safe and happy christmas when it comes. by way of context for my remarks, the ongoing conflict between russia and ukraine has amplified substantial increases in international commodity prices. notwithstanding this adverse development, the domestic economy continues to show signs of strong recovery, our foreign reserves are robust and employment is at pre - covid levels. the shock has however contributed to significant increases in both inflation and inflation expectations here in jamaica and across the world, which makes inflation a source of ongoing concern for bank of jamaica. headline inflation at october 2022, as reported by statin, was 9. 9 %, which continued to trend above the upper limit of the bank's inflation target of 4 to 6 %. this outturn was also higher than the inflation rate of 7. 3 % at december 2021 but has been declining slowly since april 2022 when it was 11. 8 %. while some of the key drivers of headline inflation, such as grains and shipping prices, continue to trend downwards on the world markets, we are not yet seeing the full pass - through to domestic food prices. in addition, core inflation, which excludes from the cpi ( consumer price index ), the impact of fuel and food prices, is high at 9 % when compared with 8. 4 per cent at december 2021. monetary tightening among jamaica's main trading partners has also continued at a rapid pace, which carries the risk of increased capital outflows from jamaica and a faster pace of exchange rate depreciation, if domestic monetary policy is not correctly aligned. therefore, since october last year, bank of jamaica has used a three - pronged approach to address the problem of high inflation in jamaica. these included : 1. gradual increases in the bank's policy interest rate by 650 basis points since october 2021 ; 2. the provision of us dollar liquidity support to the foreign exchange market to foster stability in the foreign exchange market and, 3. ensuring the maintenance of tight jamaica dollar liquidity conditions in the money market. this package of mutually reinforcing policy measures is meant to