Now with the shift in monetary policy, we are observing the first persistent decline in a long time - the number of transactions is going down and the number of houses being sold above the asking price is sharply decreasing. These are only the first, concrete steps in the transmission of our monetary policy tightening. And we have yet to see their full effect.
The result is that, by the end of last year, we were able to pension off the use of special money market swaps with deposits - which had amounted to over R50 billion at peak - and had effectively completed the task of draining the liquidity surplus on a permanent basis.