BSP hopeful of changes to new charter

MANILA, Philippines - The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is still hopeful the amendments to its charter will be passed by Congress soon despite not being included in the list of priority bills, a central bank official said.

“The BSP charter amendment bill is one of the captain priority bills of Congress and the Aquino administration so we’re wondering why it has not moved,” BSP Deputy Governor Vicente Aquino told reporters.

“I understand that the bill as revised by the Committee on Banks’ Technical Group has been submitted to Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. for a review and hopefully, eventual submission to the plenary,” he added.

“We’re still hoping that this should be tackled as a top priority bill and that’s the latest status in the Lower House,” Aquino said.

The BSP has been pushing the amendment of Republic Act 7653 or the New Central Bank Act which took effect in 1993. The proposed amendments are expected to better strengthen the functions of the central bank in maintaining price stability conducive to a sustainable economic growth.

House Bill 3112, authored by Rep. Belmonte and Nelson P. Collantes, was submitted for review during the first week of April.

The bill has four major areas which tackles reinforcing corporate and financial viability of the BSP, strengthening of monetary stability function, firming the financial stability function, and a number of financial reforms.

However, after the Lower House resumed sessions early this month, the bill was not among the 14 priority measures identified. The “priority” tag means policymakers are aiming to pass these bills before the end of the first regular session on June 13.

Meanwhile, in the Upper House, Aquino said the measure will be tackled once the Lower House passes the bill on final reading.

“In the Senate, we were made to understand that the Senate is only awaiting Lower House action on the BSP charter amendatory bill,” Aquino noted.

“But at least the committee on banks on the Lower House will reprocess this and there were some revisions which I would say would not really affect the substance,” he added.