The monetary policy focus in developed economies shifted from containing inflation to avoiding unnecessarily and undesirably low inflation. This has brought new terminology to the vocabulary of central bankers and economists. 3. Domestic developments  Although 1998 is a mere five years ago, so much has changed in South Africa in the interim that a brief reflection on that year is called for.
By 1998, our democracy was only four years old and South Africa was still re-integrating into the international arena. However, it was already obvious then that the country’s sound macro-economic policies were delivering the desired results. After a period of double-digit inflation covering the largest part of the 1970s and 1980s, inflation was in single-digits in 1995.