| Bank of England to publish economic scorecard by its agents |
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LONDON: The Bank of England plans to bring out economic scorecards set by its 12 regional agents and used by policymakers at its meetings to assess the economic conditions. This will begin in the New Year, the bank said.
The bank's regional agents assess the economy in terms of output, demand, labour market, prices, retail sales, profitability and investment intentions and get feedback from some 60 contacts in each region every month to draw up the scores.
Two of the bank's officials, in an article in its Quarterly Bulletin, said the regional agents' scores are a simple way of translating the information from agents' contacts into a quantitative assessment of the economy over time, as seen through the eyes of the agents.
The bank's nine-member Monetary Policy Committee uses the scores along with the presentations and reports by the agents at its monthly meetings to review the interest rates.
The central bank said the agents’ scores provide insights into certain difficult areas like recruitment, where there is no official data available. In a recent mention, governor Mervyn King said the scores had given valuable information on the anti-inflationary effects of migrant labour, which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.
The bank will publish the regional scores alongside the "Agents' summary of business conditions" and the minutes to the MPC's rate-setting meetings.
The central bank had retained the interest rates at 4.5 per cent at its meeting late last week, holding the rate for the fourth month in a row.
The article, jointly authored by Rachel Reeves of the structural economic analysis division and Michael Sawicki of the external monetary policy committee unit of the bank, said financial markets had shown the strongest reaction to the minutes and the quarterly inflation report.
It said, "The relatively strong impact on financial markets in response to these communications suggests that they contain significant information about the policy and economic outlook."
The authors found that disclosure about splits among the members of the MPC did not create more market reaction than any other set of minutes.
Posted
on : Tue, 13 Dec 2005 02:05 GMT | General News
By : Mike Lawson
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