About the AUD/JMD rate
The AUD/JMD rate is how many JMD one Australian dollar buys. It moves constantly with interest-rate expectations, commodity prices and global risk sentiment - see what moves the rate. Tradergy shows the mid-market reference rate and does not forecast where it’s heading. For the 52-week highs and lows and a daily table, see the AUD/JMD rate history.
Where else this pair appears: the reverse rate, JMD → AUD, is on the receiving Jamaican dollar view, and sending Australian dollars to Jamaica is covered on the AUD → JMD transfer page. Every AUD pair sits on the convert hub, and to work in more than one currency at once there is the currency converter.
What the central bank targets, and how it says so
Jamaica set its central bank a number and then wrote it into law. The Bank of Jamaica states its monetary policy objective as achieving an inflation target of 4.0 to 6.0 per cent a year over the medium term. The Bank of Jamaica (Amendment) Act 2020 made price stability, defined as achievement of that target, the Bank's primary statutory objective, gave it operational independence, and removed the Minister of Finance's power to issue monetary policy directions.
That Act changed who decides as well as what is decided. Jamaica's Ministry of Finance and the Public Service records that it created two statutory committees, a Monetary Policy Committee and a Financial Policy Committee, in place of sole discretion resting with the Governor. It also restricted government borrowing from the central bank to declared national emergencies, requiring a ministerial order subject to an affirmative resolution of Parliament.
Intervention in the currency market follows published rules. The Bank describes B-FXITT, its foreign exchange intervention and trading tool, as a rules-based competitive multiple-price mechanism governing how it buys from and sells to authorised dealers and cambios, with a Flash Intervention Tool running as a fixed-volume, best-price auction deployed according to market conditions and its results disseminated electronically.
The Bank then did something it says no other central bank has. In December 2018 the Bank launched an inflation-targeting communication campaign built on reggae and dancehall, around the line that low, stable and predictable inflation is to the economy what the bassline is to reggae music. By its own account it became the first central bank in the world to showcase an economic message at major music festivals, appearing at Reggae Sumfest in 2019 and Rebel Salute in 2020, and the campaign won Best Communications Initiative at the Central Banking Publications awards in February 2020.
Sources: Bank of Jamaica, The Inflation Target · Bank of Jamaica, Inflation Targeting Communication Campaign · Bank of Jamaica, B-FXITT · Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, Jamaica, Building institutions for the future, Part I, An Independent Central Bank