The point in Figure 6 that corresponds to February 2008 is not far from origin, while the point that corresponds to February 2009 is a long way from origin and represents substantial sum of squares for the inflation-gap and output-gap forecasts. Assessing whether monetary policy has been efficient thus entails attempting to determine whether monetary policy has been on the modified Taylor curve or not. The analysis is therefore ex ante, which means that the starting point is the central bank's forecasts for inflation and resource utilisation rather than the actual outcomes. In practice it is of course difficult to perform a more precise analysis, it becomes rather a question of determining to what extent monetary policy has been clearly inefficient in the sense that it is easy to find another repo rate path that would stabilise inflation more without stabilising resource utilisation less, or that would even stabilise both more. A factor that can make the analysis even more complicated is if the central bank, apart from inflation and a measure of resource utilisation, also includes other targets or limitations in its monetary policy deliberations. On such conceivable factor is so-called interest-rate smoothing, in other words that the central bank also chooses to even out the changes in the policy rate and ensure that they are made in relatively small and regular steps, for example by 0.25 percentage points at a time. With such a restriction, monetary policy will be located at a point above and to the right of the modified Taylor curve.
With this regard, the Data Management Group would act as the owner of the project. In addition, as the project itself is very crucial, which could create some wide impacts throughout the organization, the Bank of Thailand realizes its significance and hence assigning a group of high-ranking officials in forms of the Steering Committee to closely monitor the progress along the way. The committee panel is led by the Assistant Governor, Information System while I also serve as the project sponsor to ensure that the data management system project could well progress in accordance with the pre-scheduled plan. As for the roles of financial institutions which are major providers for a good deal of financial data in the system, most institutions have to bear high burden, both human labor resources as well as other expenses for data submission under the current system. With the implementation of the new system, most institutions unanimously provide great cooperation - to create comprehensive data transmission network that could accommodate all data transfer demands in time. Today’s opening ceremony presents the first phase of the financial institution electronic data submission project. From today onwards, financial institutions’ submission of over 200 hard copy and CRF reports would be substituted by merely 41 data sets. Consequently, this would more or less lessen the burden and make it more convenient for financial institutions to report data to the Bank of Thailand.