felipe m medalla : opening message for moody's credit rating review opening message by mr felipe m medalla, governor of bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( bsp, the central bank of the philippines ), for moody's credit rating review, manila, 21 august 2022. * * * dr. diokno already described the economy. what i will now explain is why we have raised policy rates by 175 bps. does the central bank even care about growth? the answer is it does care about growth, but it cares even more about its inflation - targeting mandate. in the long run, it's actually good for the government since you can issue longer - term bonds if everybody believes in the inflation forecast. the overall belief in the philippines is that inflation targets are missed in the philippines because of external and supply shocks, for which policy rates are not the most effective tools. so why did we raise rates? the first answer to that question is we would have raised it anyway as part of our normalization. when the economy was recovering, we were very aggressive in making sure that the pandemic did not [ cause the economy to ] contract more than [ what could have been ] generated by the lockdowns. we brought down the policy rate to 2 percent. i've been with monetary board for 11 years ; 3. 5 percent is, more or less, the normal policy rate. that's not surprising since the midpoint of our inflation target is 3 percent, so it's only logical that we have a positive, real policy rate. of course, the pandemic changed everything – we went to a 2 percent policy rate, lent p600 billion to the national government interest - free, and then, we saw markets panicking and fleeing to cash because of the uncertainty. in other words, markets were going in the " wrong " direction. the pandemic is expected to reduce capex and make people want to save more. the " correct " reaction of the market should have been to lower interest rates, but they were fleeing to cash because of the sense of uncertainty, to ease further upward pressure on interest rates, we purchased a trillion pesos of bonds from the secondary market. in relation to our balance sheet of p4. 5 trillion, that's quite big. all along, we had an exit plan. it was [ supposed ] to be a gradual liftoff of rates – probably starting the last three months

nestor a espenilla, jr : bsp and baiphil moving mountains - new heights in banking excellence speech by mr nestor a espenilla, jr, governor of bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( bsp, the central bank of the philippines ), at the induction ceremony and general membership meeting of the bankers institute of the philippines ( baiphil ), makati city, 14 july 2017. * * * distinguished monetary board colleagues, juan de zuniga and tony abacan, baiphil president irene arroyo, immediate past president, liza ortiz, other baiphil past presidents, baiphil directors, officers and members, bap president nestor v. tan, bank ceos, my pdic colleagues, esteemed guests, friends, fellow bspers past and present, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon! it is an honor and pleasure to carry on the tradition of inducting the new board members and officers of baiphil. as new bsp governor … [ i assumed the post eleven ( 11 ) days ago ] … it is auspicious that i now address the new leadership of baiphil … on behalf of my colleagues in bsp and the monetary board, let me extend our congratulations. as new leaders, it is natural for us to aspire greater achievements for the teams we lead. this is why i find your theme : “ scaling new heights in banking excellence ” very engaging. the theme is both timely and relevant as we come into our fresh roles and as the financial system evolves. the theme mentions heights. to add imagery to this message, let me take mt. everest as a starting point. everest, known as the roof of the world stands twenty - nine thousand and thirty - five ( 29, 035 ) feet above sea level. this is the ultimate goal of hard - core mountain climbers, the highest of heights. on 29 may 1953, a new zealander, sir edmund hillary and a sherpa, tenzing norgay, successfully climbed mt. everest in the face of great risk. as documented, they were the very first mountain climbers to reach the summit. now, sixty - four ( 64 ) years later, the peak of everest is decidedly less lonely and more than 3, 500 climbers have already reached the top or “ summitted ”. a myriad of things have changed since then. but from the time it was first done to the present day, scaling everest or any mountain