Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno said the government must invest significantly in the development of infrastructure for information and communications technology to achieve a digitally strong economy in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease 2019.
Diokno, in his opening statement delivered during a virtual roundtable discussion held Wednesday morning with select heads of financial institutions and conglomerates organized by Bloomberg, said the government must start planning for the post-pandemic life ahead.
“As we advance from the current ‘crisis’ to the ‘New Economy’ state, we need urgent reforms in the areas of public health, social protection, disaster response, and countryside development.
Reinforcing all these reforms is the digital imperative,” he said.
“To pave the way for a digitally strong economy, we must invest more in the development of the necessary ICT infrastructure and people skills. Furthermore, we should fully operationalize the National ID System, pursue further efforts toward e-government services, provide an enabling legal and regulatory environment, and communicate the benefits of all of these to the public,” he said.
He said the BSP would continue to seek opportunities to further enhance the regulatory environment and encourage supervised institutions to embrace digitalization.
“Over the past year, we achieved successes in this area, including those that have allowed people to pay bills, do online purchases, and engage in other financial transactions even during quarantine,” he said.
He said the BSP further improved the interoperability of the payment platforms PESONet and InstaPay with the entry of more participants. It also launched the National QR Code Standard (QR Ph) and the Government e-Payments Facility (e-Gov Pay).
“What we want to see in the near future is an expanded use of e-payments, such as for public market purchases and for taxi, jeepney, and bus fares. By the end of my term in 2023, we aim to have at least 50 percent of retail payments in volume and value, done electronically, and 70 percent of adult Filipinos having and using a bank transaction account,” he said.
Diokno said with the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, both goals might be achieved much earlier.
He said the BSP would also push for the enactment of relevant post-COVID-19 laws. These include the proposed Financial Institutions Strategic Transfer (FIST) bill, which seeks to encourage financial institutions to sell their non-performing assets (NPAs) to asset management companies by providing fiscal incentives, further amendments to the New Central Bank Act to allow the BSP to better detect and address conglomerate risk among supervised institutions and a law on recovery and resolution planning for banks aligned with international standards.