The Philippines has become a running case study on monetary policy as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas BSP, the Philippine central bank, kept forex speculators at bay and forex trading crawled to a virtual standstill.
The Philippine peso weakened slightly on Monday to Ps45.510 as forex traders acted more like spectators than speculators in the countrys Philippine Dealing System PDS through which the interbank market executes currency trades. The days volume was only $56 million.
In another development, the Philippine treasury entirely rejected all bids for the 182-day treasury bills even as the new 1% rise in overnight rates took effect. The government considered the bids as speculative.
Despite being...
