The Reserve Bank today announced new procedures for the release of its quarterly Monetary Policy Statements, interim Official Cash Rate Reviews, and six-monthly Financial Stability Reports.
From and including the 11 August MPS release, the Bank will:
- Release MPSs at 9:00am on the day of release, via its pages on Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters terminals, the Bank’s website, Twitter, and email to news media and general public subscribers. This procedure will be the same for the release of OCR Reviews.
- For MPSs, the Bank will also invite media to a press conference with the Governors to be held at 10:00am on the same day.
Release procedures for the FSR will be the same as for MPSs, except that the press conference will be held at 11:00am, so that journalists have more time to read the larger document.
The decision on new procedures follows a halt to pre-announcement embargoed lock-ups for news media and financial market analysts after the March OCR decision was leaked from a media lock-up.
Governor Graeme Wheeler said that, following requests by news media representatives to restore the lock-ups under different security arrangements, the Bank commissioned a security review by Deloitte.
“On the basis of the security review, the Bank has decided not to resume pre-release lock-ups for news media and financial market analysts.
“The review found that in the rapidly changing technology environment there is no completely failsafe option, and that over time the extent of risk mitigation through controls will be eroded by advances in technology.
“We gave serious consideration to the value of the lock-ups, and the potential issues that could arise if we permanently discontinued them. We also consulted with many other central banks. New Zealand was one of only a few central banks that held pre-release lock-ups of OCR decisions for news media.”
Head of Communications Mike Hannah said that the Bank has sought and received feedback from news media to enhance the operation of press conferences and related briefing opportunities.
“We are taking that feedback on board. To support real-time market assessment, we will include forecasts of key data series as part of our release on Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters pages with the 9:00am MPS releases. We will also be placing additional emphasis on other opportunities for media access, such as on-the-record media briefings which have been trialled successfully this year.”
More information
Communication security review (PDF 3MB)
Media Contact:
Mike Hannah, Head of Communications
Ph 04 471 3671, 021 497 418, [email protected]