While the pandemic may have sped up the pace of reform, these structural adjustments were well underway even before COVID-19 hit, allowing the Bangko Sentral to take a longer-term view of the rapidly evolving situation. When I took the helm of the central bank in March 2019, our reserve requirement ratio was among the highest in the world.
That year alone, we cut the RRR by a cumulative 400 basis points – from 18 percent by the end of 2018 to 14 percent in 2019. This brought our RRR more in line with China’s 13.5 percent. The 200-bp reduction in April 2020 brings our RRR to the current 12 percent.