As we move up the ladder, we increase the degree of citizen engagement in decisions that affect them. The RSA stop short of recommending the top rung, but do propose various initiatives to increase citizen involvement and collaboration. Armed with this framework, I have been thinking about how far the Bank of England has so far climbed the citizen engagement ladder. Truth be told, I suspect for the first 300 years of its life, the Bank of England scarcely had its foot on the first rung. It saw little need even to inform the wider public about the economy and policy. Trust among the public was anonymised, institutionalised and given. When tempted to step up a rung, the Bank quickly contracted an acute form of vertigo. Over the past 25 years the Bank has taken significant steps up the engagement ladder, in part in response to the public’s trust shift, in part reflecting the Bank’s wider policy responsibilities. These steps have 7  transformed how the Bank “informs” and “consults” the public on its views and policies. One simple diagnostic is the rise in the Bank’s publication count. Seventy years ago, the Bank published precisely one speech a year. Today, rarely a day passes without multiple publications. Then, the Bank uttered publically fewer than 5,000 words per year. Last year, it uttered in excess of 4 ½ million. Over the past two decades, it would not be an exaggeration to say there has been a genuine revolution in central bank communications.
Enhancing the framework set out in the Medium Term Program (MTP) through further structural adjustments to strengthen fiscal discipline will support the relative improvement of Turkey’s sovereign risk. Should the goals set out in the MTP are achieved we consider that it may be possible to keep policy rates in single digits throughout the forecast horizon. Increasing budget deficits worldwide continue to pose upside risks to inflation expectations and thus to global market interest rates in the long term. Our medium-term inflation and monetary policy outlook envisage that recovery in global economic activity follows a slow and protracted course, while saving rates keep rising and global interest rates remain at low levels for an extended period. However, huge budget deficits particularly in developed countries, which are triggered by fiscal stimulus packages adopted in the face of the global financial crisis, besides the lack of a clear exit strategy from these policies, create upside risks regarding medium-term global interest rates. Countries with relatively sounder banking systems and prudent fiscal policies would be more resilient against these risks. In this context, I would like to once more underline the significance of fiscal discipline in the current conjuncture. The course of oil and other commodity prices still constitutes another important risk. Shortterm ample liquidity driven by countercyclical policies on a global scale exposes not only the emerging market currencies, but also commodity prices to speculative actions. Therefore, oil and other commodity price developments warrant caution, even in a scenario of a gradual global economic recovery.