BSP sees PH exiting FATF money laundering gray list by January 2025

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas expects the Philippines to exit the money laundering ‘gray list’ of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force by January 2025.

BSP Governor Eli Remolona Jr., who is also the chair of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, said the FATF would determine by October this year during its plenary meeting if the Philippines fulfilled the 18 action items.

Remolona said the government already fulfilled 15 of the 18 action items to exit the FATF gray list. “This has become classified as largely addressed, and we still have three more action items to work on,” he said during a forum organized by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines and San Miguel Corp. in Manila Monday.

“We don’t get out of the gray list by October. Once we’ve been told we have largely addressed those three remaining items there’s an exit process that then ensues. If that works out, then we will exit in January,” he said.

Remolona said during the forum that the reduced tariff on rice would help bring down inflation in the coming months.

“This is why we think the non-monetary measures that the government has put in place, especially EO 62, are so helpful, because that will help us get to where we want to go, which is stable prices. By stable prices, we mean inflation is somewhere between 2 and 4 percent,” he said.

The BSP chief also said while the peso lost value against the US dollar, it was moving in line with other Asian currencies. “You can see that the peso is in good company. You can see that the peso, relative to our peers, has been somewhat stronger. It has weakened against the US dollar, but so have most other currencies,” he said.

The peso closed at 58.50 against the US dollar Monday.

Remolona said the US dollar would likely stay strong amid tensions that are happening in the world. “The strength of the dollar has been because the dollar has become the single most important safe haven currency. Whenever you have tensions around the world, the dollar is stronger. In fact, even if the uncertainty is in the US, it makes the dollar stronger,” he said.

“We don’t want too much volatility in the peso. We want the peso to move based on fundamentals. When there’s too much volatility, it’s bad for trade. It’s bad for both imports and exports. So we want to make the movement of the peso smoother,” Remolona said.