BSP tweaks rules to relieve forex pressures

By Cai U. Ordinario @caiordinario

The amendments were made to encourage the use of the hedging facility by increasing its availability, to relieve pressures in the forex spot market.

“The lessons from last year’s weakness in the peso show that spillover of risks is inevitable in an increasingly global and interconnected world. Hence as the peso stabilizes, we find this an opportune time to strengthen Filipino resilience,” BSP Governor Felipe M. Medalla said.

“The CRPP had to be revamped to increase its availability to banking clients. We did this by streamlining and easing the requirements and ex- panding the coverage of eligible FX transactions,” Medalla added.

Documentary requirements have been aligned with the existing regulations on forex transactions and have eliminated the notarial rules to enable expeditious applications.

Further, forex obligations and transactions eligible for the CRPP Facility have been expanded to include non-trade transactions and investments from the original traderelated coverage.

Other operational amendments include the change in the applicable US dollar-interest rate to be used in the computation of the rate for non-