the philippine central bank. extending unprecedented assistance to support the economy in crisis mode 1 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches let me go back to the topic of navigating through the headwinds, the way ahead for central banks. for us to look to the future, it is important to look at where we came from. let me provide some context on the philippine central bank's actions during the pandemic. [ first ], we reduced the policy rate to 2. 0 percent. to put that in context, at that time, our inflation forecast was at least 3. 0 percent so we were actually going into negative interest rate territory. number two, we bought p1 trillion worth of government securities. because of covid, banks were fleeing to cash. to our great credit as an inflation - targeting central bank, they are fleeing to pesos, not to dollars. unfortunately, the fall in bond prices would have resulted in very high market interest rates so we [ at the central bank ] ended up buying 1 trillion worth of government securities relative to our balance sheet of [ about ] 5 trilion [ prior to the pandemic ]. 1 in addition, we lent money to the government – directly and as approved by congress. it was a very transparent [ form of ] assistance from the central bank to the government. of course, we thought that every time we do something like this, something we have never done before, we must have an exit plan. our [ initial ] exit plan was a beautiful one : as soon as the economic conditions improve, [ we will implement ] a long series of 25 basis points ( bps ) increases, bringing back to policy rate to 3. 5 percent to 4. 0 percent. but as they say, it is very hard to predict, especially the future. what happened, instead [ of our exit plan ], is that global developments - - the ukraine war, the abrupt pivot of the fed - - and of course, very high inflation [ changed our plans ]. for 2022, when you look at seasonally adjusted month - on - month ( mom ) inflation, only one month [ december 2022 ] is it is consistent with the target at 0. 3 percent, which translates to 3. 6 percent [ once annualized ]. to make matters worse, [ at ] the beginning of 2023 had a huge supply shock, [ resulting in ] a 1. 0 percent increase in seasonally adjusted mom inflation [

, camarines norte, general santos city, and cagayan de oro city. we will also further carry out our clean note policy and our coin recirculation program through our coin deposit machine project and we will soon see that these machines will actually be strategically located given our partnership with the private sector in this regard. on the legislative agenda. our priorities this year are the bank deposits secrecy bill and the financial accounts regulation act. we will also continue to support the passage of the digital payments bill. on operational efficiency. we are lining up several systems and initiatives that will help enhance the bsp's operations and serve our stakeholders better. let me cite a few items : we have the integrated financial management information system or ifmis, that will capture, monitor, and report financial information. we also target a more streamlined procurement processes. we also hope to complete the enterprise hr system, a business solution intended to be a more agile replacement to the current system, the ihris ( integrated human resource information system ). hindi ko pa nga alam ibig sabihin ng ihris, may bago na! pero alam ko yung ibig sabihin ng ihris, what it refers to but not the individual letters. ( i don't even know what the ihris acronym stands for and we're already developing a new system! although i know what ihris does and what it represents, i am not familiar with the meaning of the individual letters ). by the way, that is the sign of an acronym - based society. on internal audit, the bsp meets the elements to achieve the highest rating of " generally conforms. " by the way, to accountants like us, those are important : " generally conforms " to accounting principles, especially with international standards for the professional practice of internal auditing and the institute of internal auditors 4 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches code of ethics. but for this year, we shall focus on obtaining an independent validation of this assessment from an external party. and finally, fostering a research culture. i am glad that monetary board member [ eli ] remolona has joined us. he has quite a bit of experience in research. he and [ deputy governor ] francis [ dakila ] and our league of people in research working together will, i hope, produce a bsp research academy that holds true to its name. we will also come up with a consolidated