As a further policy measure to develop the government securities market, the Central Bank from today has commenced releasing summary trading statistics on actual trading of government securities in the secondary market. From August 1, 2016, all primary dealers have been required to undertake inter-primary dealer trades in the trading platform arranged by the Central Bank through the Bloomberg which is a major international financial trading and information electronic platform. Further, all primary dealers will report all outright sales of government securities of value in excess of Rs. 50 mn to investors to this platform within 30 minutes of each transaction. Accordingly, the Central Bank will monitor these transactions on an on-going basis and summary of trading information consisting of yield rates and volume by each series of securities traded will be published in the Central Bank website in the format as annexed below. The Central Bank plans to release such information twice a day, at noon and close of the day, in due course when the reporting system is fully operative.

The increasing trend in both headline and core inflation continued, reflecting the rise in demand driven inflationary pressures in the economy. Supply side disruptions arising from adverse weather conditions and the revisions introduced to the tax structure by the government also contributed to the upward movement in inflation in the past two months. Meanwhile, in the real sector, the available indicators suggest a continuation of the growth momentum in economic activity. In particular, power generation, tourism and port related services, construction sector, investment goods imports as well as the purchasing managers’ indices (PMI) for manufacturing and services sectors have shown improvements over the past few months.