ecosystem, we encourage foreign investors who may bring advanced technologies and technical expertise to take advantage of untapped potentials in the financial services space and be our partners in achieving our economic growth and financial inclusion objectives. 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches in closing, i would like to highlight the following : first, the philippines ’ macroeconomic fundamentals remain sound. together with carefully thought - out policy and public health responses and the sustained vaccine rollout, these will carry the philippine economy toward sustainable recovery. second, targeted fiscal support remains central to the covid - 19 response. monetary policy will remain accommodative until domestic demand and overall macroeconomic activity recovers, as the bsp keeps in mind its price and financial stability objectives. and third, the bsp continues to support reforms aimed at raising the country ’ s competitiveness and transforming the financial landscape so that it is future - ready through digitalization and adopting sustainability principles. thank you very much for your attention. 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches

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