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.

felipe m medalla : an assessment of the philippine inflation picture speech by mr felipe m medalla, governor of bangko sentral ng pilipinas ( bsp, the central bank of the philippines ), at the development budget coordination committee ( dbcc ) briefing on the immediate impact of rising inflation on the national programs and projects of the government, manila, 27 february 2023. * * * chairman elizaldy co ; congressman stella quimbo ; members of the committee on appropriations ; and colleagues from government, good morning. both congresswoman quimbo and [ finance secretary ] ben [ diokno ], my colleagues, have already said quite a bit on inflation. examining the drivers of inflation the important point is that, of course, food and non - alcoholic beverages are the biggest contributors to inflation. but the other point is that the pressures on prices are broadening. to put this in simple numbers, 196 items out of the 315 [ total consumer price index ( cpi ) items in january 2023 ] that are used to calculate the price index are above 4. 0 percent, [ the upper bound of the inflation target ], and 123 of those [ above - target cpi items ] are food and beverages. so, [ it is ], quite a bit, meaning inflation is beginning to spread to the rest of the economy. but the other way to look at it is, 66 of those [ cpi items ] are not [ above target or within threshold ]. to put it bluntly, higher prices could beget higher prices. of course, the scary part is what they call a " wage - price spiral " : prices are high, wages are high ; prices are high [ er ], wages are high [ er ]. to make matters worse, if that also results [ in a vicious cycle where ] prices are high, the peso is weaker ; weaker peso, higher prices. then, we will really be in trouble. keeping supply - side pressures on the supply side fortunately, that is not the case. to some extent, we have been quite successful in preventing what we call " knock - on " effects, second - order effects of the supply shocks on inflation. historically, that has resulted in the fact that the longest period that we have had headline inflation above 4. 0 percent, [ the upper band of our target range ], is 15 months. this means after three months, the base effects take over because of the higher prices. it is harder for prices