The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day her­ald­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of the new Mort­gage Mar­ket Ref­er­ence Rate (MM­RR) as part of a set of new rules for res­i­den­tial mort­gages aimed at im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy and dis­clo­sure.

The MM­RR is an in­ter­est rate bench­mark against which all res­i­den­tial mort­gages rates are to be priced and re-priced.The MM­RR is com­put­ed by the Cen­tral Bank us­ing in­for­ma­tion on com­mer­cial banks' fund­ing cost and yields on ap­plic­a­ble trea­sury bonds.

In a state­ment last night, the Cen­tral Bank said: "Since the in­for­ma­tion on banks' fund­ing cost and trea­sury yields are cap­tured with a lag, the MM­RR that goes in­to ef­fect on De­cem­ber 1 will re­flect da­ta for the quar­ter end­ing Sep­tem­ber while that an­nounced on March 1 2012 will be based on da­ta for the quar­ter end­ing De­cem­ber 2011."