ways of reaching them. e - money [ electronic money ] has played a big role [ in onboarding filipinos to the formal financial system ]. e - money accounts grew to 36 percent in 2021 [ from 8. 0 percent in 2019 ], much higher now. promoting strong consumer protection mechanisms 1 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches in the aspect of consumer protection and fraud, fortunately, we were finally able to pass a law that requires every prepaid sim [ subscriber identity module ] card to have a verified id [ identification ]. by the way, i tried it myself. i bought a sim card, uploaded my id, which was a national id, and took a selfie. it took them only three days to send me a text [ message ] saying, " you have been verified. " maybe they found out that i was the central bank governor ; that is why they were fast. i do not know, but i do not think so. then, i opened [ an ewallet account ] - i will not say what kind, whether it is gcash or it is maya - and was able to do so very quickly. by the way, i am also the chairman of the anti - money laundering council, and what we found was that before we did this - making sure that every sim card has a unique identity of the individual with the right name, with the retina, and the fingerprint - we actually found out that there was one person owning 1, 000 sim cards [ that was ] actually operating illegal gambling. finally, because of all these problems, congress moved and said, " from now on, no verification of identity, your sim card will expire in two months. " so, it is working. since the number of people who use their mobile phones [ for digital payments ] has increased significantly, that is why we are actually quite confident that we will be able to succeed if we can improve the physical infrastructure - maybe we can even bring it [ the proportion of filipino adults that are financially excluded ] below 30 percent. taking a whole - of - government approach to financial inclusion from the point of view of government, it [ financial inclusion ] is a whole - of - government approach. the national strategy for financial inclusion is not just the central bank's [ initiative ] ; it is the [ initiative of the ] entire government. addressing the infrastructure problem as i already alluded to, there are issues, of course. you have the

on purposeful structural reforms. the country ’ s strong track record of prudent policymaking has likewise led to a robust external payments position, larger international reserves, improved external debt metrics, and healthy public finances. at the same time, philippine banks continue to be sound, stable, and well - functioning based on all metrics. 1 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches it is from this strong position that the bsp acted swiftly and decisively to inject liquidity into the system to calm the market. at the same time, it communicated its priorities and policies well. we reduced policy rate by a cumulative 175 bps – by 25 bps even before the pandemic became full = blown, followed by a series of three 50 bps cut in 4 months. we cut reserve requirements by 200 bps for universal and commercial banks and by 100 bps for thrift banks and rural and cooperative banks. we entered into a repurchase agreement with national government through the bureau of the treasury ( btr ) ; 1 we also opened a daily one - hour window to purchase government securities in the secondary market ( open market operations ) ; we remitted dividends amounting to ₱20 billion to support the ng programs, even if the bsp is no longer required under our new charter to remit cash dividends to the national government. 2 / moreover, we expanded the set of eligible instruments as compliance with the bsp ’ s reserve requirement to include newly granted loans to msmes and critically impacted large enterprises that do not belong to conglomerates ; we also issued time - bound and targeted regulatory and operational relief measures to encourage bsp - supervised financial institutions to continue their support to the economy, particularly the msme sector. these measures include : extension of financial relief to borrowers, incentivized lending, promotion of continued access to financial services, support for continued financial services delivery, and support for sufficient level of domestic liquidity and economic activity. in sum, we have injected approximately p1. 9 trillion pesos in liquidity into the financial system, equivalent to 9. 6 percent of gdp. why help the msmes? because this sector is a huge part of our economy. the msmes account for about 99 percent of total establishments in philippines, 63 percent of total employment, and 36 percent of total value added. the sector is also a major contributor to the country ’ s current account, generating one - fourth of our total export earnings. the banking system