system — which has officially become one of the bsp ’ s mandates under our amended charter. in the pursuit of this new mandate, the bsp has actively worked on making the country ’ s payments system interoperable and on promoting digital payment solutions. with interoperable payments system, electronic payments or fund transfers from one account to another — even if lodged in different banks — is possible. to cite achievements on interoperable payments system, we now have 45 financial institutions participating in instapay and 55 participating in pesonet as of 30 november 2019. instapay allows real - time electronic transfer of small - value funds, while pesonet allows electronic transfer of bigger funds typically within the same banking day. 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches to cite milestones on digital payments, a study by un - based better - than - cash alliance showed that in terms of volume, financial transactions done electronically jumped from 1 percent of total in 2013 to 10 percent of total in 2018. in terms of value, financial transactions done electronically surged from 8 to 20 percent of total over the same period. with the present trajectory, we are confident that the volume of financial transactions will hit or surpass the target of 20 percent of total this year and to reach 50 percent by the end of 2023. recently, we launched egov pay, which will allow more government agencies, such as, for example, the bureau on internal revenues, to accept electronic payments from the public. we also launched the national qr code standard, which will pave the way for more extensive use of qr codes as payments. in the future, we hope to see market vendors, tricycle and taxi drivers, and sari - sari store owners, among others, using qr codes as a means to accept payments. having an efficient payments and settlements system — such as by making them interoperable and by having more digital means to do financial transactions — helps increase the velocity of such transactions. in turn, this leads to rise in economic activities and incomes. as such, the pursuit of an efficient payments and settlements system is in line with the goal of financial inclusion, which is a key agenda of the bsp. other initiatives toward financial inclusion — or making financial products and services accessible to all — include financial education, as well as regulations that make it easier for the marginalized to access financial products and services. these regulations include those that streamline requirements for opening savings and investment accounts,

rafael buenaventura : new year message 2005 speech by mr rafael buenaventura, governor of bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( central bank of the philippines ), at the annual reception for the banking community, manila, 18 january 2005. * * * a warm welcome to all! let me begin by thanking all of you for joining us tonight at this traditional annual reception to officially welcome 2005. but more than your presence tonight, we thank you for your full cooperation and support in working with us to keep our economy steadily moving forward, to preserve overall confidence, and to steadfastly implement reforms. the year 2004 was again another very challenging year for the banking community, being a presidential election year with all the uncertainty that usually surrounds such a major political event. we also bore witness in the second half to a sharp increase in oil prices that inevitably had major impact on the whole economy. but in spite of all these, the economy still turned in a very respectable outcome. gdp growth is estimated at 6. 2 percent. headline inflation has picked up to around 7. 9 percent in december 2004, due mainly to the feed through from energy price adjustments and other supply side shocks, but more broad - based inflationary pressures were held in check. our accumulation of international reserves, at $ 16. 1 billion at end - december 2004, was at the high end of our expectations. the peso exchange rate finished firmly at p56. 267 and has been appreciating since then. undoubtedly, record remittance inflows that will definitely exceed p8 billion for the whole of 2004 has once again shored up our economy. commendable outcomes were also contributed by our export sector. on the domestic front, healthy consumer demand helped keep the economic momentum going. in the financial system, the reform agenda relentlessly forged ahead undeterred by all the potential distractions. the long overdue asset cleanup finally got going under the spv law. as of end 2004 about p26 billion was already done and another p54 billion was firmly in the pipeline or a total of p80 billion so far. assuming these transactions would all be completed in due course, we can look forward to a lowering of the npl ratio to less than 10 percent by end - 2005 from the current 13 - 14 percent level, given 2005 economic growth projection. still, the improving npl outlook would still be more than double than the pre - 1997 crisis ratio of less than 5 percent. this under