9 Reviews of forecast performance help to update our understanding of economic relationships, evaluate risks to the current outlook and identify areas where we could improve our accuracy. The Bank will always make forecast errors, reflecting the uncertainties in assessing the current state of the economy and its outlook.
For example, the vast majority of forecasters were unlikely to have been able to accurately predict the sharp decline in oil and export commodity prices that occurred over 2014 and 2015 – one factor that has led to current low  6  See: RBNZ (2001). ‘The monetary policy decision-making process’, Independent review of the operation of monetary policy supporting paper; RBNZ (2007) above.