This may well be the true answer or reality, but it is rather disappointing if not frustrating that the wide gap between demand and supply has continued to exist. 3. So the natural question for us would be how we can close that gap and bring about a winwin outcome for project proponents and operators on the one hand and financiers or investors on the other. And in this connection, I should say that Hong Kong is uniquely well positioned to play a pivotal role in facilitating and catalysing investment flows to infrastructure projects in the region. We have well-developed capital markets and a deep pool of professional talents, in addition to Hong Kong being a leading centre in arbitration and dispute resolution, all of which are essential building blocks in support of infrastructure investments and their financing. It was against this background that the HKMA set up the Infrastructure Financing Facilitation Office (IFFO) in July 2016. IFFO has the following mission: (a) provide a platform for the key stakeholders to get to know each other and share experiences; (b) enhance the capacity of the investing and recipient countries in infrastructure financing; and (c) facilitate infrastructure investment and financing flows. 4. IFFO now has 90 stakeholders from Hong Kong, Mainland China and overseas joining as Partners. They include project developers or operators, commercial and investment banks, multilateral development financial institutions, asset owners and managers and professional service firms. In the last two years, IFFO has accomplished a lot.
As long as inflation expectations are unaffected, there is no reason to suppose that the effects on inflation will be permanent. Transitory effects account for inflation target deviations An explicit inflation target has the advantage of enabling us to evaluate how monetary policy is conducted. Consequently the Riksbank cannot implement an asymmetric approach to the inflation target without this being detected. Two curves are presented in the diagram below. One represents CPI inflation and the other is one of the various indicators of underlying inflation, in this case the CPI excluding transitory effects from house mortgage interest costs, changes in indirect taxes and subsidies, and prices of imported goods.1  Actual and underlying inflation 1995 – 1997 12-month change figures, per cent 4  3 CPI 2 "Underlying" inflation 1  0 95  96  97  98  Source: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank. Note. Underlying inflation is represented here by one of the indicators (UNDINH) used by the Riksbank; it shows the CPI excl. changes in indirect taxes and subsidies, house mortgage interest costs and prices of goods and services that are mainly imported. 1The use of this indicator in the present context does not signify that it is particularly significant or the best approximation of underlying inflation in every case; instead, it happens to be the indicator where all the excluded items had a marked influence on price movements in the period 1995–97.