in closing, i leave you with these key take - aways : 4 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches the asean - 5 economies, including the philippines, are expected to rebound in 2021, though downside risks continue to dominate. improved global economic growth prospects and country - specific improvements amid vaccine developments and sustained fiscal policy support are expected to lend support to these economies ’ growth prospects for the year. consensus view expects philippine economic recovery to be broadly in line with the national government ’ s outlook for 2021. sources of optimism on the economy ’ s growth prospect in 2021 stem from the quarter - on - quarter progress in the gdp outturn ; improved business and consumer confidence ; within - target inflation ; ample liquidity in the system ; sound and stable banking system ; and sustained robust external payments position. the bsp remains committed to staying the course : ( a ) maintaining price stability ; ( b ) ensuring financial sector soundness ; ( c ) strengthening resilience against external shocks ; and ( d ) supporting the national government ’ s inclusive growth objectives. thank you. 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches

looking back, we did not know exactly where monetary policy was headed, but we were sure that we had to leave accommodative territory as soon as possible. in football terms, our tactics reflected some sort of kick - and - rush spirit, with rate hikes of 50bps and 75bps reflecting the desire to front - load our action and reach a more neutral stance of our policy rates as soon as possible. looking forward, i expect us to reach broadly neutral territory at next month ’ s policy meeting. at that moment, we are no longer stimulating economic growth, but we are also not yet slowing it down. neutral territory is like halftime in a football game, when coaches gather all their players around a white board and draw the game plan for the second half. the team that comes back on the field might then play in a different way, for example more tiki - taka than continued kick - and - rush. for the ecb, the overall game plan remains obvious. our response needs to be resolute, implying that monetary policy needs to enter restrictive territory to dampen demand. we need to address high inflation persistence and growing risks of it becoming entrenched in people ’ s minds, which would make inflation more costly to tame. how fast and far ongoing rate increases will bring us into restrictive territory is surrounded by uncertainty and will be evaluated meeting by meeting. as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it will become more likely that the pace of increases will slow. in any case, our priority going forward will be the need to rule out the risk of persistently high inflation. this also reflects the switch to more varied tactics, with more instruments coming into play. the level to which the policy rate will be increased also depends on the calibration of these instruments, such as the roll - off of our bond holdings. it would not be consistent to keep a large balance sheet to compress the term premium, while at the same time tightening policy rates above neutral. once more, all our instruments need to work in the same direction. there are clear benefits of such a well - balanced tightening package. from a stance perspective, passively rolling off our bond portfolios in addition to raising the short - term rate, helps to transmit the tighter policy stance more evenly to the real economy. model simulations conducted by dnb staff show that an earlier start of so - called quantitative tightening ( qt ) lowers both peak inflation and the required terminal rate