stay on the supply - side now, let me go back to price stability. what is clear is that inflation - if you just look at the headline numbers and core inflation - is really much, much higher than normal. by the way, if you look at the short history of the philippine inflation - targeting central bank, the longest number of consecutive months where we missed our [ inflation ] target 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches on the high side is 15 months. so, what it really means is that supply shocks do not become self - perpetuating inflation. now, this [ current period ] is particularly a bad period because of a series of shocks. as shown by the green little bars at the bottom of the page, we were initially expecting to go back to 0. 3 percent per month inflation, but that was delayed by two months because of shortages of vegetables and, of course, the big news in the philippines - the shortage of onions. our policies are to prevent supply shocks from generating more inflation because [ we feared that ] inflationary expectations have gotten out of control. and, as you can see, this is one of the reasons why we are quite aggressive [ in tightening monetary policy ]. if you look at the chart on the right, we will see that private sector forecasts of inflation are much higher than our [ bsp's ] forecast. so, there is a risk that the supply shock can generate, what we all call, " second - order effects. " and that is the reason we have to be quite aggressive, and we are actually more aggressive than all our asian neighbors. inflation on a target - consistent future path by the way, we expect inflation to return to normal. last year's month - on - month [ figures ] are already quite consistent with it. but we need a series of month - on - month [ figures ] of 0. 3 percent [ for year - on - year inflation ] to be able to go back to the 2. 0 to 4. 0 percent inflation target by the late part of the third quarter or the early part of the fourth quarter [ of 2023 ] and for the rest of 2024. relief from foreign exchange pressures the biggest challenge, of course, was the pivot of the us [ federal reserve ] to tight money, [ which ] caused a large depreciation of the peso, just like many other currencies. and, actually, there are two stories : what you

of investigation of such cases. this means that the concept of bank security management now goes beyond guard force deployment and monitoring. broader authority and responsibility for security management personnel clearly requires reorientation and training of both officers and staff of your departments. for at the end of the day, even with the most expensive security gadgets, it is the training of your personnel, their ability to discern potential danger or fraud, and skills honed through constant practice that will spell the difference between success and failure for your security management. now is the best time therefore for bsma to take the lead in this direction by keeping your association united and constantly engaged in dialogues to keep up to date with the industry best practices. and so, once again, i congratulate the bsma and its leadership for having a proactive stance in dealing with bank security management. i wish you all the success in keeping the banking community and its clients safe and secure. mabuhay ang bsma! salamat sa inyong lahat.