A substantial part of increased imports have been capital goods and intermediate goods, which will contribute to the increase in the productive capacity of the economy and increased exports going forward. The MPC will continue to monitor the developments around the current account deficit and the potential risk to the inflation outlook stemming from possible currency depreciation.
That research leads me to my first policy conclusion – that we should facilitate the more widespread availability of granular data to deepen our knowledge of how businesses are performing, as in aggregate this equates to overall macroeconomic performance. I am certain that the insights delivered already by the CompNet project are just the tip of the iceberg.