Much of the Central Bank’s focus over the last year has been on mitigating the effects of the pandemic. The Central Bank’s intertwined responsibilities – consumer protection; monetary policy; prudential regulation; payments, and so on – have strong interconnections with each other. This positions us well to understand and mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
The economic challenges posed by COVID-19 have been met by exceptional policy support. This has included a range of scal, monetary, macro-prudential and micro-prudential policy actions (as well as actions taken by nancial services rms) to support households, businesses and vulnerable borrowers.