The Cen­tral Bank yes­ter­day an­nounced changes to the de­ci­sion-mak­ing frame­work for mon­e­tary pol­i­cy "to en­sure greater con­sis­ten­cy with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice and with our own spe­cif­ic macro-eco­nom­ic and in­sti­tu­tion­al con­text."The main change is the ex­pan­sion of the Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee (MPC), which has over­all re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for for­mu­lat­ing mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, to in­clude two ex­ter­nal mem­bers.

The ex­ter­nal com­mit­tee mem­bers would help to en­sure that the MPC ben­e­fits from spe­cialised ex­per­tise and di­verse view­points in its pol­i­cy­mak­ing de­lib­er­a­tions.The first two ex­ter­nal mem­bers are Pro­fes­sor Miguel Car­ril­lo, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness and Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ramesh Ram­saran, In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.They will both serve for a pe­ri­od of two years.

The chair­man of the MPC is Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran and the com­mit­tee in­cludes the two deputy gov­er­nors, the chief econ­o­mist and the se­nior mem­ber re­spon­si­ble for op­er­a­tions. The MPC will meet every two months, rather than every month as pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained. This will give the Com­mit­tee a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly con­sid­er eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial con­di­tions, in­clud­ing im­por­tant is­sues and pol­i­cy al­ter­na­tives. If nec­es­sary, the MPC can con­vene un­sched­uled meet­ings.

The Bank's mon­e­tary pol­i­cy de­ci­sions, in­clud­ing the set­ting of the re­po rate, will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic in the form of a "Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment" on the Fri­day evening af­ter the MPC meet­ing. An ad­vance re­lease cal­en­dar of mon­e­tary pol­i­cy an­nounce­ments will be pub­lished on the Cen­tral Bank's web­site.The first meet­ing of the mod­i­fied MPC will take place in Sep­tem­ber 2013 and the in­au­gur­al Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment will be made on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2013.