The Financial Stability Coordination Council (FSCC) remains vigilant against potential disruptions from global developments to ensure that Filipinos can rely on a functioning financial system.
FSCC chairman Benjamin Diokno said the council will always choose to be pre-emptive against possible systemic risks.
The outgoing governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the FSCC reaffirmed the country’s strong gross domestic product (GDP) growth from January to March this year despite the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the first month of the year due to the more contagious Omicron variant.
“The global outlook has changed significantly downwards over the last six months, and yet our Q1 growth was a strong 8.3 percent year-on-year. This reflects the resilience of the local economy,” Diokno said.
The FSCC also noted that with first quarter growth outperforming market expectations, prospects for the economy differ significantly from global trends; and that the local growth momentum is expected to be sustained despite fluidity of markets worldwide.
This was validated by the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) statement, which showed a higher growth forecast for 2022 for the country despite a significant reduction in global growth.
The multilateral lender raised its GDP growth for the Philippines to 6.5 percent instead of 6.3 percent for this year last April.
The FSCC noted that the rest of the world is already feeling the pressure from rising fuel costs and the recent policy actions of the US Federal Reserve.
The FSCC is an inter-agency council comprised of the BSP, the Department of Finance, the Insurance Commission, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It is the venue for financial market authorities to identify, monitor, manage, and mitigate the build-up of systemic risks in the Philippine financial system.
