The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has moved further the scheduled full live implementation of the new International Transactions Reporting System (ITRS) to end-June this year or two months from its original April 2024 Go-Live plan.
The ITRS will ensure a more transparent disclosure of banks’ foreign exchange (FX) transactions.
Basically, the ITRS is a data collection system specifically to gather data on all peso and FX transactions that pass through the local banking system. It is a summary report that captures data on the banks’ net on-balance sheet FX assets and net foreign asset (NFA) position daily.
In a memo (BSP Memorandum No. M-2024-001), BSP Deputy Governor Francisco G. Dakila Jr. announced that the live ITRS was soft-launched last week, Jan. 8.
He also confirmed that instead of April, the ITRS full live implementation is now pushed back to June 28, 2024. He did not provide an explanation for the delay.
By end-June, Dakila said banks “will be mandated to submit reports via the ITRS production portal upon full implementation.”
ITRS reports will be submitted using the application programming interface (API) in extensible markup language (XML) format.
“This memorandum supersedes prior communications to banks on the schedule of the ITRS implementation. Furthermore, the FX Form 1/1A reports shall continue to be submitted regularly according to the existing policy, until otherwise advised by the (BSP),” said Dakila.
While in the Soft Go-Live stage from January until June this year, the BSP said banks may submit their reports through the sandbox or production portals of the ITRS system.
It added that “banks may continue setting up their systems and are encouraged to continue using the sandbox to test report submissions until further advised to ensure readiness upon full implementation of the ITRS system.”
The BSP started the ITRS pilot testing last November and December 2023. During the pilot testing phase, banks submitted weekly and monthly ITRS reports.
For the whole month of October last year, the BSP conducted technical briefings for the banks. After conclusion of the ITRS pilot-testing, the BSP soft-launched the system this month as scheduled.
The purpose of the ITRS is to monitor cross-border transactions and to collect data for the compilation of the country’s balance of payments (BOP) statistics based on international standards. It will also serve as a platform for prudential supervision and monitoring of FX transactions by the BSP.
The BSP will require all banks to submit information using the ITRS report on all peso and FX transactions between residents and non-residents, as well as all FX transactions between residents.
As part of transitory provisions, some FX reports will continue to be submitted on a weekly and monthly basis as per their existing deadlines and reporting rules until otherwise advised by the BSP, to facilitate the gradual transition to the ITRS report.
The BSP said it will not sanction or penalize violations to the ITRS reporting rules immediately, and instead will only impose sanctions and penalties one year after the effectivity of the circular.
Based on the BSP’s ITRS Manual of Instructions, the data to be collected are on banks’ correspondent accounts such as: nostro accounts, which are correspondent accounts of the resident banks with banks abroad or with other resident banks (i.e. in the case of banks that are not licensed to have correspondent accounts with banks abroad); and vostro accounts, which are non-resident banks’ accounts with resident banks.
The ITRS also collects data on resident-to-resident FX transactions.
The BSP said banks’ ITRS report should be “complete, accurate, consistent, reliable, and timely” to comply with the BSP Reporting Standards. The report will also be submitted on a solo basis, meaning the combined financial statements of the head office and local branches in the Philippines.
The BSP said the main report will cover the daily consolidated outstanding balances of the reporting bank’s peso claims/liabilities with non-residents and FX claims/liabilities with non-residents and other residents. This report will compute the NFA position and net on-balance sheet FX assets or liabilities position of the reporting bank.
The BSP also said that the end-month balances of the accounts included in this report should be reconciled by the BSP with the end-month balances in the Financial Reporting Package or FRP for banks thirty working days after the end of the reference month.
The Manual of Instructions for the ITRS covered interbank transactions, export and import of goods, services, personal remittances, primary and capital accounts, foreign direct investments and portfolio investments, spot and financial derivatives, FX market turnover, loans, and other consolidated reports on FX transactions.
The BSP said the ITRS data collection methodology is aligned with the BOP data compilation standards developed by the International Monetary Fund and other internationally accepted standards, recommendations, and best practices. BOP is a summary of the economic transactions of a country with the rest of the world for a specific period.