From today, the Bank of England’s monthly rate decision will be released alongside minutes taken from the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, meaning that the usual fortnightly gap between the two has come to an end.
Every three months the event will also coincide with the Bank’s quarterly inflation report release.
Both the meeting minutes and the rate decision itself are crucial pointers for how the UK economy is performing.
The new move has been compared to America’s non-farm payrolls, but critics claims that it will mean there is too much information sent out into the public domain at once.
Mark Carney, the Bank of England’s governor, has made it clear that by opting to make the three announcements together it will “enhance [the Bank of England’s] transparency and make us more accountable to the British people”.
Governor Kevin Warsh, a former member of the Federal Reserve System in the US, recently compiled a report on the MPC’s transparency.
His review was published in December last year, and it is because of his findings that ‘Super Thursday’ has been introduced.
Mr Warsh said: “Members often find themselves in the uncomfortable position of necessarily obfuscating their views in public in the two-week gap between the policy meeting and the publication of the minutes.
“This also leads to a blizzard of communications from MPC members in the short period between the release of the minutes and the ‘purdah’ period for the next policy meeting.”