The main challenges in central banking are to maintain a monetary and banking environment that is optimal for stable and sustainable economic growth, and conducive to resolving our fiscal problems.

This was the message from Monetary Authority Chief Executive Joseph Yam at the Alumni Link Launch Ceremony cum Alumni Honorary Graduate Talk at the Open University today.

He said, in doing this, we should not lose sight of two other related challenges.

"One is to keep an eye on the longer term, both in applying solutions to current problems and in building the infrastructure for future needs. The other is to maintain confidence in our monetary and financial systems," Mr Yam said.

"This requires, above all, doing our job effectively through achieving the objectives set for us by the Government."

It also requires transparency and education, he added. 

Noting that the authority has paid a lot of attention to public education, Mr Yam said its efforts will be boosted later in the year with the opening of a permanent information centre.

Despite all this work, he said, it seems from the events in the market in the last few weeks, that there is nothing as good as real-life experience to encourage people to learn more about how their system works. 

"This has been brought home to us in the authority by the quite remarkable surge in visits to the information on our website about the Link and the Currency Board system over the past couple of weeks," Mr Yam said.