where am i? " and the farmer below says, " you are in a balloon. " and the man in the balloon says, " he must be an economist. he is telling me something right that is totally useless. " looking at how we use numbers is really the point, right? as they say, an accountant is someone who attempts to value the present, right? [ they ] look at the past. and, hopefully, an actuary is someone who attempts to value the future with all its uncertainties. and, clearly, that is very useful. for instance, in the bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( bsp ), we have economists, we have statisticians, econometricians, [ and ] accountants. they will look at data in a very 1 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches different way. maybe the bsp needs some more actuaries. maybe we would do a better job if we had more actuaries, judging by the conversations we were having [ earlier ] at the table. i would like to tell you, for instance, that our human resource department informs me that there are more than 1, 100 positions in the bsp that have to do with data. of course, they use data differently. and maybe taking your view on many things, maybe we could learn a lot from you [ actuaries ]. of course, when you look at the bsp, it has three pillars. the most important pillar, i think, is price stability, which is, right now, very simple to explain : keeping inflation between 2. 0 – 4. 0 percent. for this year, we will clearly miss the target. and as we will explain, we will miss the inflation target because the high inflation is due to what we call " supply shocks, " which is not our accountability. in other words, if inflation is too high because we [ at the central bank ] created too much demand, we created too much credit, too much money, then blame it on us. but the [ current elevated ] inflation is due to shocks that have little to do with demand but have more to do with supply. clearly, central banks cannot control them. what we are saying is because it is a supply shock, we should take the necessary policies so that the inflation will return to 2. 0 – 4. 0 percent. and in our calculation - if we are right - by the second half of next year, inflation will already be

would rather have a capital market where the insurance companies play a bigger role. and i am sure you, actuaries, will play a very big role in that. in short, banks, by their very nature, have a lot more resources than insurance companies, but they also are much more limited in what they can do by the very nature of their funding sources. so, i will cut through some parts of my speech because i am sure that you are in a hurry to be sworn in. i was told you have 400 members. and just like us, as i already said, you must want your decisions to be based on data. so, the question we ask ourselves always in the bsp is : how else can we get it? how else can we extract as much as we can from our data? and, in that sense, you probably have exactly the same concerns that we have. i will just tell you that, okay, we are very confident. although i am less than a hundred percent sure that, given what we are doing, we can support the nascent economic growth. what have we done? we have raised interest rates. but fortunately, we seem to be right that high interest rates will not kill the economy. and then, we hope that with the interest rate adjustments, inflation will come back to normal by the middle of next year, unless there are new supply shocks, new surprises. and then by 2024, hopefully, we will be back to normal inflation rates again. i heard the speech of the outgoing president. i congratulate you on a job well done. and it seems to me that every society has exactly the same problem, right? some are happy ; some are not happy. but in the end, the society survives and prospers. by the way, my other impression is you seem to be better funded than economists. you have nicer meetings, okay? so, congratulations to all the members, especially the new officers, and it is my great privilege to be able to swear you in. magandang gabi sa inyong lahat. 3 / 3 bis - central bankers'speeches