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THE
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) kept its policy rates
unchanged Thursday but allowed some modifications to its
special deposit account (SDA) window that effectively
released an estimated P300 billion worth of funds into
the banking system.
But as
they deleted and stopped offering some tenors, they also
reduced the interest rate on the remaining instruments.
The
decision kept the rate at which the BSP borrows from or
lends to banks at 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
The BSP
last adjusted these rates January 31 this year when it
introduced a 25-basis-point cut that helped spur the
economy forward.
At the
same time, the BSP stopped offering its two-month,
three-month and six-month SDAs so the funds that were
released from there may be channeled to the more
productive sectors of the economy.
Between
P500 billion and P600 billion worth of funds have been
parked by banks and trust entities in the lucrative SDA
window since May last year, funds that competed with the
sale of government securities and made the head of
National Treasurer Roberto Tan spin and ache for a
while.
SDAs pay
more than the shorter-dated Treasury bills and Treasury
bonds that Tan sells to institutional investors on a
regular basis, forcing him and Finance Secretary
Margarito Teves to take the drastic step of offering
government securities not through the regular auction
process but via negotiations, as no one wanted to buy
from them anymore.
Deputy
BSP Governor Diwa Guinigundo, however, brushed aside
claims that the fine-tuning of SDAs was a concession to
the government and its suddenly unattractive IOUs.
“The
SDAs have not been competing with the sale of government
securities, which is driven only by fiscal
requirements,” Guinigundo said.
Maria
Cyd Tuano-Amador, BSP managing director for its
monetary- policy subsector, stressed that the funds
released by the withdrawal of the longer-dated SDAs were
seen quickly absorbed by an economy also seen to sustain
its fast 7.3-percent clip last year in terms of the
gross domestic product.
“So in
that sense, the money released will not be
inflationary,” she said.
The SDAs
that have been scrapped for good pertained to the two-,
three- and 6-month windows that used to pay interest of
5.25 percent, 5.3125 percent and 5.5 percent,
respectively.
The
remaining SDAs that continue to be offered now only have
rates of 5.0625 percent for the one-week tenor, 5.1250
percent for the two-week tenor and 5.1875 percent for
the one-month tenor.
In the
past, these paid 5.09 percent, 5.1875 percent and 5.25
percent, respectively.
“Their
removal was meant more to encourage the movement of
funds to bank lending or even the purchase of government
securities,” deputy BSP Governor Guinigundo said. |
