Bond Price Bulletin One of the factors affecting secondary market activities in the bond market is the lack of information on bond prices. To help overcome this problem, the HKMA launched the Bond Price Bulletin at the beginning of 2006. The bulletin provides investors with convenient on-line access to information on bond products and bond prices provided by eight major banks in Hong Kong. Indicative bid/offer prices of over 200 bonds of different currencies issued by both public and private sector entities are provided by the eight contributing banks. Outlook Let me now turn to talk about the outlook of our debt market. Notwithstanding the achievements we have made so far in developing our debt market, we fully appreciate that there is nothing to be complacent and there are still many challenges facing us. The HKMA has therefore embarked on a review of our debt market development with a view to identifying measures which can be adopted to help market development. On the demand side, everybody knows that the Mainland of China is enjoying a rapid economic growth and business opportunities are mushrooming. The recent announcement by the Mainland authorities of measures to liberalise portfolio investment outflows has marked the emergence of such kind of opportunity for Hong Kong. Under these new rules, each Chinese citizen is allowed, among other things, to invest in fixed income securities overseas within certain limits.
As a euro participant, however, Sweden would be in the same boat as other member states as regards many of what appear to be likely supply shocks, for instance oil price fluctuations. As regards the lack of knowledge, there are clearly no simple institutional solutions. But this does not mean that the institutional frameworks for conducting policy do not affect the accumulation of knowledge. As I mentioned earlier, the Stability and Growth Pact has led to a rapid development of EU work to arrive at a better understanding of the interaction of public budgets and capacity utilisation. In Sweden, the acquisition of knowledge about potential growth, the output gap and so on has been stimulated in that the Riksbank has been made accountable for safeguarding the value of money and we have placed this mandate in a clear intellectual framework that calls for deeper analyses. This in turn has had consequences for how both the Ministry of Finance and the National Institute of  4  BIS Review 6/2002  Economic Research are now working on these matters. Another reason why Swedish authorities have reason to be more involved in a broad discussion and analysis of questions such as these is perhaps that euro participation could lead to the financial markets becoming less interested in analysing specifically Swedish conditions. I consider that the importance of a high level of competence in such institutions as the Finance Ministry, the Riksbank and the National Institute should be emphasised.