seizing opportunities – monetary & external policies on monetary policy, we adopted inflation targeting in 2002, in response to findings that the traditional macroeconomic relationship between monetary aggregates and prices had weakened. while inflation targeting is a more challenging framework, it represents a better way of doing things – it is more effective, it promotes greater accountability and it engages the public in the process. this is a guiding philosophy at the bsp – continuously developing better ways in terms of process and operations to achieve institutional objectives. under this framework, bsp has had good success. since 2009, inflation has been kept below the upper bound of the national government ’ s inflation target range. moving forward, we see inflation remaining on a generally low and stable path and within the target range of 2 - 4 percent, under our inflation targeting framework. in 2016, we further refined our policy framework by launching the interest rate corridor ( irc ) system to align our open market operations with the liquidity needs of the market. this will strengthen the transmission channels of monetary policy, boost domestic money market, foster real price discovery and further improve the intermediation of funds. low inflation has allowed the bsp to maintain policy rates at similar low and stable levels. this lowered the cost of doing business and the cost of consumer loans, factors that support and encourage economic activities. in the philippines, household consumption remains a key growth driver of the economy. the philippine economy is strong. gdp grew 6. 4 percent in the first quarter this year, one of the fastest in asia. this brought our record of achieving uninterrupted gdp growth to 73 consecutive quarters. meanwhile, we have been able to build our war chest of fx reserves because of strong of remittanes, export proceeds and bpo receipts. in turn, the presence of such strong buffers has 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches allowed us to continue with a policy of a market determined exchange rate policy. building fx reserves to a healthy level and allowing the exchange rate to absorb some of the external shocks are yet another set of responses to past crises. ladies and gentlemen. our experiences in the past two decades prove that challenges or difficulties provide compelling reasons to change the status quo. viewed in this context therefore, challenges and achievements are indeed two sides of the same coin. indeed, the country ’ s low and stable inflation, strong banking system and robust external position have not gone unnoticed by credit rating agencies and other third party analysts. the philippines ’ 24 positive credit rating actions

recognize the importance of overseas employment in helping ease the pressure of unemployment and in boosting the national economy by helping increase the foreign exchange reserves. there are of course second - order effects of higher foreign exchange inflows, including the impact on the domestic currency and external competitiveness. but to me, it is fundamental to first address the current challenges and measurement issues that have very important analytical and policy bearings. this conference will hopefully help pave the way to clarify such issues. first, let us look at the statistics on the number of ofws. our theme for today, “ ofws : bagong bayani, ilan ba talaga kayo? ”, suggests that we are not yet certain exactly how many are our ofws, and more generally, how many filipinos are overseas. accuracy in this aspect may really be a challenge because what we want to monitor are people who are always on the move. at present, there are various agencies producing ofw - related statistics. the philippine overseas employment administration ( poea ), the overseas workers welfare administration ( owwa ) and the commission on filipinos overseas ( cfo ), on the one hand, maintain statistics based mostly on administrative records as an offshoot of their functions. on the other hand, the bureau of labor and employment statistics and the national statistics office, have data based on labor force surveys and census of population and housing. we need to understand how these data from various agencies are interrelated. the first key question is : is there a uniform definition of what an ofw is?. for instance, in the census of population of housing, overseas workers are defined as those who had been away for not more than five years from date of last departure. do the other agencies producing ofw statistics adopt the same definition?. is it possible to integrate and reconcile these sets of data from various sources to come up with one, uniform, comparable set of data on ofws and overseas filipinos?. the next question is : how are the definitions linked or reconciled with definitions in other macroeconomic statistical frameworks such as the 1993 system of national accounts ( 1993 sna ) and the 5th edition of the balance of payments manual ( bpm5 ), which adopt a one - year residency criterion for determining who are the residents of a particular economy?. what are the implications of adopting different sets of definition in our economic statistics and in economic analysis?. while there are efforts in the inter - agency technical working group (