The achievement of such a target will be facilitated by continued economic growth resulting from high public and private investment and savings, improving competitiveness, gradually rationalised expenditure which leaves sufficient funds for development work, and reducing the budget deficit resulting in low demand pressure. Needless to say, the Central Bank will actively support strategies that ensure such outcomes. In addition, transparency of monetary policy decisions and operations will be maintained to enhance the policy effectiveness and during the year we will also seek the views and advise of experts in the field of economics and on macroeconomic management in order to benefit by their expertise in our monetary policy decision making process. Further, as done in the past, the policy announcements will continue to be made according to an advance announcement calendar, and the Calendar for 2007 is set out below. Table 3 Monetary policy announcements for 2007  10  Month  Date of Monetary Policy Announcement  January  18 Thursday  February  15 Thursday  March  16 Friday  April  11 Wednesday  May  16 Wednesday  June  15 Friday  July  18 Wednesday  August  16 Thursday  September  14 Friday  October  17 Wednesday  November  16 Friday  December  14 Friday  BIS Review 8/2007  6.
Some of the Primary Dealers who are dealing outside the Scripless Securities Settlement System could have caused potential threats to the system. This may have been particularly due to the fact that using SWIFT was considered to be an expensive method of transferring data. Therefore, the Central Bank has now introduced a low cost method of transferring data using the Wide Area Network connecting them with the Central Bank. Accordingly, all Primary Dealers are now urged to use this method to ensure retail transactions are not proceeded outside the system. Two new laws, namely the Prevention of Money Laundering Act No. 5 of 2006 and the Financial Transactions Reporting Act No. 6 of 2006 have been enacted last year to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing and to strengthen the reporting mechanism for financial transactions. Arising from such initiative, the Financial Intelligence Unit has already been established to investigate and take action to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The work of the FIU will be further expanded during the year 2007. In line with the global trends, we will be taking steps to further promote corporate governance in the financial sector by implementing several measures. Mandatory corporate governance rules covering important areas of corporate governance principles will be introduced in place of the existing voluntary codes.