With a view to assisting the Bank to achieve its objectives, and given that real sector issues play an important part in monetary policy decisions, the Bank embarked in September on a series of consultations with private/real sector stakeholders to gauge their perceptions with regard to specific issues, such as the evolution of the main macroeconomic indicators, labour market developments, access to finance, and to identify the domestic and external constraints they face.
The Bank intends to maintain regular contact with stakeholders of the real sector as we need to weigh real sector issues more adequately in our policy decisions. The implementation of Basel II by the March 2008 deadline constituted another major challenge for the Bank this year.