felipe m medalla : full speed ahead for payments digitalization speech by mr felipe m medalla, governor of bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( bsp, the central bank of the philippines ), at the launch of the usaid's strengthening private enterprise for the digital economy ( speed ), 10 january 2023. * * * i am a former professor of economics, so i have to clarify a few things. [ while micro, small, and medium enterprises ( msmes ) account for more than ] 98 percent of numbers [ of all enterprises in the philippines, they have a ] much smaller percentage of value. on the other hand, the top five banks account for, maybe, 60 percent of [ system - wide ] assets. and that is the way the economy goes. but nonetheless, every small transaction counts. let me cite another example. the person taking care of our kids eventually got married, then, because of the pandemic, their family had [ financial ] problems. we were able to transfer money to her because of e - payments [ electronic payments ]. all those aggregate statistics do not matter to me relative to that particular person that i care about, who helped us bring up our children. so, let us not be too focused on the value of assets and numbers over people. again, i would like to thank usaid [ united states agency for international development ]. you have a long history of cooperation with the bsp. of course, my partners in government, i will not mention each one - but if i must single out, your excellency, ambassador marykay carlson. our colleagues from the government and all our partners in the private sector, we have enjoyed, as i said, a very fruitful partnership with usaid for quite some time now. the accomplishments [ from our collaboration ] are so easy to see : instapay, our fast payment system, and - of course - what is now a very efficient substitute for all checks, pesonet. when you look at all the transactions taking place over those networks and all the other things that they facilitated, we have to celebrate. but of course, obviously, we can do a lot more and, clearly, project speed [ strengthening private enterprise for the digital economy ] - by the way, we in this country are very good at acronyms. for its part, the bsp has introduced several initiatives to facilitate smes'adoption of digital payments and financial services.

convergence existing between the two goals of financial stability and monetary stability. keeping inflation under control, which is the ultimate goal of every central bank, has proved to be the best way to reduce uncertainties on the market, to alleviate distortions and, so, to eliminate one of the fundamental sources of financial instability. conversely, central banks need sound and efficient banking systems for ensuring rapid transmission, to the whole economy, of the impulses of their monetary policy. this is all the more important given that the assets at the disposal of central banks - the monetary base in our jargon - is becoming increasingly tiny compared to the total assets managed by credit institutions and, beyond that, by financial market operators. in this context, the monitoring of financial stability may certainly not be considered as a by - product or a mere extension of the traditional monetary stability objective of central banks. the two functions are closely related but distinct. in other words, the monetary stability and financial stability wings belong to the same bird.