Bank of England to publish minutes faster, cut number of policy meetings
Credit: Reuters/Luke MacGregor
Pedestrians walk past the Bank of England in the City of London May 15, 2014.
British finance minister George Osborne said he backed the changes, which are the biggest adjustment to the organisational framework for BoE monetary policy decisions since the central bank gained independent power over policy in 1998.
'By removing the present drip-feed of news ... in favor of a single monetary policy announcement, we believe these arrangements will enhance the effectiveness of our monetary policy communications, making the policy signals we send as clear as possible,' BoE Governor Mark Carney said.
The Bank currently publishes minutes detailing discussions of the Monetary Policy Committee, and a breakdown of how its nine members voted, with a lag of nearly two weeks.
The BoE also said on Thursday that it would start publishing transcripts of its policy discussions with an eight-year lag, effective from its March 2015 meeting.
While the change to the publication of minutes will take place from August 2015, reducing the number of annual MPC meetings to eight from 12 will need a change to the 1998 act which gave the BoE operational independence.
Finance minister George Osborne said he would seek to pass the necessary legislation after May's election.
The European Central Bank is also reducing the number of policy-setting meetings it holds to eight a year from 12.
Carney added that moving to eight meetings would give an equal chance of a rate move at each meeting, in contrast to the BoE's current practice of preferring to change rates when they coincide with its quarterly economic forecast updates.
Under the planned changes, the MPC will meet for three days rather than two under the current system and deliberations on the first day would not be reported via the transcripts.
British legislators expressed disquiet in March at the BoE's practice of only publishing heavily edited minutes of key meetings, rather than following the U.S. Federal Reserve's example of releasing full transcripts five years later.
Senior BoE official Paul Fisher said at the time that publishing full transcripts could discourage frank discussion.
The BoE also said it planned to hold in 2016 four joint meetings of the MPC and the Financial Policy Committee, which is tasked with dealing with potential risks to the economy from the banking system.
The secrecy until now around the BoE's meetings contrasts with most other British public bodies, which must release records 20-30 years after they were created.
(Writing by David Milliken; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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