THE BANGKO SENTRAL ng Pilipinas (BSP) has updated its guidelines on standard operating procedures (SOP) during holidays and work suspensions to ensure the continuity of financial service delivery and market stability.
The memorandum dated Aug. 12 and signed by BSP Governor Eli M. Remolona, Jr. said the revised rules are in line with the regulator’s “continuing commitment to uphold the efficient functioning of the country’s large-value payment system, to ensure the reliability of currency operations, and to promote the stability of the Philippine financial markets.”
“The SOP has been revised and simplified to reflect the BSP’s enhanced capability to perform essential central bank operations under different scenarios where several work arrangements can be applied,” the BSP said.
“Accordingly, such operations shall continue to be undertaken except during nationwide regular and special non-working holidays for both the public and private sectors as declared by Malacañang, or when the BSP Governor/Officer-in-Charge suspends operations due to safety concerns, or non-availability of critical utilities, services, and infrastructure, among other reasons.”
In the case of the latter, the BSP shall issue a public advisory, while its concerned departments or offices must send out advisories to supervised institutions “as much as possible on the day before but no later than 8 a.m. of the same day.”
“For suspensions taking effect after 8 a.m., announcement shall be made at least one hour prior to effectivity.”
Essential central bank operations are monetary and US dollar-peso foreign exchange (FX) operations, preparation of the daily reference exchange rate bulletin, peso real-time gross settlement via PhilPaSS Plus, and cash services, which include currency deposits and withdrawals, Cash Service Alliance, currency management support services, and check-clearing tellering transactions.
A holiday will be considered a reserve day when all essential central bank operations are done for the entire business day.
When the BSP performs these essential operations, relevant financial market infrastructures and industry associations shall also conduct their respective operations, namely: National Registry of Scripless Securities settlement for government security (GS) transactions (Bureau of the Treasury); FX, interest rate swaps and other derivatives trading (Bankers Association of the Philippines; fixed-income trading (Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp.); interbank and interprofessional GS repo trading (Money Market Association of the Philippines); equities depository and fixed-income depository delivery versus payment (Philippine Depository & Trust Corp.); check image clearing system, PESONet clearing, US dollar-peso payment versus payment (PvP), and Philippine domestic dollar transfer service (Philippine Clearing House Corp.); and automated teller machine and InstaPay clearing (BancNet). — K. K. Chan
