RBA Governor Lowe’s Plan For Historic Moment Dashed

• Published on
• 28 Jun 2021, 11:08 AM

By Sophia Rodrigues

(Sydney, June 28, 2021)—It was meant to be a historic moment for RBA Governor Philip Lowe, addressing the media in person following monetary policy decision on July 6.

But any hope of this has been dashed following the surging Covid cases in Sydney and the lockdown announcement on the weekend. RBA’s media department are likely making plans to convert this into an online conference like the one in March and November last year.

The RBA’s monetary policy decision on July 6 will be a significant one with expectations that the three-year yield target will not be moved to November 2024 bond, and instead the April 2024 bond will be maintained as the target bond.

But more important will be the announcement on the future of the bond purchase program. Given there will be lot of explanation associated with this announcement, Governor Lowe decided to address journalists and market economists.

The highlight this time was going to be the fact that it would be an in-person post-policy conference to be addressed by Lowe, or any other RBA governor in the past. But this is now as good as cancelled.

Lowe will have to wait longer to log this historic moment of his career, and likely also for the RBA.

--Disclaimer: I have covered RBA only since May 2011, so I might be wrong in assuming that RBA governors have never addressed media in person following monetary policy decision.

--Contact: Sophia@centralbankintel.com