The paper focuses exclusively on the preparations being made by financial institutions and payment and settlement systems for the Year 2000 problem. It does not deal with preparations made by social infrastructures, such as telecommunications or utilities that support computer system operations, nor does it cover Year 2000 preparations of companies supplying host computers and software, although these deserve careful attention of financial institutions.
Both total and core inflation have firmed in the past couple of months. Still, since the middle of last year, an average shortfall in inflation of 0.7 percentage points has been unexplained by fundamental drivers. The factors behind this weakness include below-average food inflation, caused by a combination of abundant crop supplies and increased competition in the retail sector.