BSP told to be more proactive

Allow us to add our voice to the concern raised by letter-writers Maria Margarita Aytona and Stephen Monsanto. We really cannot wrap our mind around the warning to the public from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Gov. Benjamin Diokno to guard against the possibility that banks could be dispensing fake peso bills from their ATMs. That did not come from a vacuum. Diokno rang that alarm in reaction to social media reports running rife about bank customers receiving counterfeit money from banks’ ATMs.

That could only mean two things: First, that some banks have so little respect for the BSP’s regulatory powers they could now be emboldened to conspire with syndicates churning out fake peso bills—buying them at the cost of junk, giving them out to their customers through their ATMs and then gobbling up the full value of the latter’s legitimate money in their safekeeping. It’s a rip-off!

Secondly, BSP is now seen as not doing its job as regulator and its officials are just clinging to their posts and helping themselves to the millions in scandalous salaries, perks, and privileges for their illusory “public service.” Else, how on earth could the BSP have the gall to shift to the public (largely unschooled in counterfeit detection) the burden of being vigilant about the kind of money that comes out of ATMs which the BSP itself seem “inutil” to do anything about?

Couldn’t any one of those highest-paid BSP officials come up with a less laughable idea, other than mouthing crummy assurances like “the banks (with respect to their ATM systems) are bound by law to exercise the highest degree of diligence in protecting the interests of their clients”? BSP’s response to any banking crisis has seemed almost always reactive: Investigate erring banks after screwing up, instead of really “monitoring” their activities and transactions with an eye for red flags before everything blows up in everyone’s face.

YVETTE SAN LUIS-PETROCELLI
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