There is also an undertaking that any changes to the content of the letter, and any changes to the delegations, shall be made public. These commitments provide important safeguards of the independence of the HKMA in its day-to-day operations. I should add here that there has never in the past been any instance of the Financial Secretary's overriding or bypassing the Monetary Authority in the exercise of these delegated powers. So we would not expect to see disclosures of this kind very often. Nor would we expect to see frequent changes to the content of the letter or the form of the delegations, for an important part of operational independence is that it should be stable and predictable, and not something that is tinkered with at whim. The Exchange of Letters will, I believe, provide a clear basis for the HKMA to continue to carry out its work with a high level of autonomy in the years to come. Conclusion These will, naturally, be years of challenge for Hong Kong: there have been very few times in Hong Kong when this was not the case. The HKMA, as Hong Kong's central banking institution, has its part to play in helping Hong Kong meet the challenges. It also has its own special challenges. The main challenges in central banking are to maintain a monetary and banking environment that is optimal for stable and sustainable economic growth, and, particularly in the case of present-day Hong Kong, an environment that is conducive to resolving our current problems.
The latter is the responsibility of the Monetary Authority, who (to quote from the Exchange of Letters) shall "on his own be responsible for achieving the monetary policy objective, including determining the strategy, instrument and operational means for doing so." An accompanying letter from the Financial Secretary to the Monetary Authority  BIS Review 44/2003  5  specifies in black and white, for the first time, the monetary policy objective and the structure of the monetary system for Hong Kong. In fact, this accompanying letter does nothing more than describe the existing arrangements, which have been transparently clear to all of us for the past 20 years. Nevertheless, the clarity with which this objective is now expressed, and the responsibility now formally given by the Financial Secretary to me, as Monetary Authority, to achieve independently this monetary policy objective have important things to say about the operational independence - and accountability - of the HKMA. The second aspect of this Exchange of Letters is, in my view, even more important. This involves the disclosure, for the first time, of the details of the delegation of statutory powers from the Financial Secretary to the Monetary Authority to enable the Monetary Authority to discharge independently his functions and responsibilities. In making this disclosure, the Financial Secretary commits himself to explaining publicly, within three months, subject to considerations of market sensitivity, any decision by him to override or bypass the Monetary Authority in the exercise of these delegated powers.