Amid United States (US) tariff pressures, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Eli M. Remolona Jr. said the central bank could keep policy rates on hold for up to a year if economic conditions and the outlook remain unchanged.

“The timeframe we’re looking at is one year. So if we want to hold it, we’ll hold for—[if] the data for the outlook stays the same, then we’ll hold for the rest of the year,” Remolona said in a Bloomberg interview on Friday, Aug. 29.

Meanwhile, private-sector economists have priced in a mix of dovishness and caution for the succeeding period, given the central bank’s signals of a still accommodative stance but now less dovish.

British banking giant HSBC believes bringing the key lending rate to five percent has placed the monetary policy at a neutral stance—“it neither stokes inflation nor growth.” But given the latest signals from Remolona, the bank’s previous shift to a more dovish outlook has slightly tilted to a less dovish tone, too.

“We expect the BSP to be data dependent in the next few rate-setting meetings wherein the decision to cut policy rates or not will depend on market surprises in terms of inflation and growth,” HSBC Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economist Aris Dacanay said in an Aug. 29 commentary.

Dacanay recently shifted his outlook from cautious to more dovish, asserting the central bank has room to accelerate and deepen its monetary easing cycle until early next year on the back of favorable consumer price trends.

Looking ahead, Dacanay retained his expectations but with a caveat. “As long as rice prices remain manageable, our base case is for the BSP to loosen the monetary reins even further, cutting its benchmark policy rate to 4.5 percent by the first quarter of 2026.”

Global investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, which was among the first financial institutions to forecast an easing cycle to extend through early 2026, retained its expectations of additional two quarters of a point in cuts by the first quarter of 2026, citing slower economic growth ahead.

“Going forward, given our expectations of slower global growth in the second half of 2025 and our more dovish Fed [US Federal Reserve] outlook versus the market pricing, we continue to expect the BSP to cut policy rates by another 50 basis points (bps) in the cycle—25 bps each in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026—to 4.5 percent,” Goldman Sachs Economics Research said in an Aug. 28 report.

For Capital Economics senior Asia economist Gareth Leather, “the relatively dovish tone of the central bank’s statement suggests further easing is likely,” arguing that the economy “could certainly do with more support.”

“Although GDP [gross domestic product] growth held up relatively well in the first half of the year, the economy looks set to slow. Low inflation and falling interest rates will provide some support to demand this year,” Leather said in an Aug. 28 commentary.

Leather noted that the main driver for his expectation of further easing is weak price pressures, leading the think tank to project another 25-bp cut this year—more dovish than the market consensus.

Unless global conditions worsen significantly or inflation falls below expectations, the signal from the central bank points to the easing cycle nearing an end.

Singapore-based United Overseas Bank (UOB) also said it is looking forward to one last quarter-point cut, likely at the final Monetary Board (MB) decision on interest rates for 2025, on Dec. 11.

UOB senior economist Julia Goh and economist Loke Siew Ting expect the BSP to pause at the Oct. 9 policy meeting to assess global developments, including US-China tariff talks, fresh US tariffs, and an anticipated Fed rate cut in December.

“Thereafter, we expect the BSP to hold rates steady through 2026, implying a terminal rate of 4.75 percent,” UOB said in an Aug. 28 report.

Japanese financial giant MUFG Bank Ltd. shares the same terminal rate for the BSP policy rate as UOB’s.

“We currently forecast the BSP to cut rates once more to its terminal rate of 4.75 percent, but likely in its December meeting rather than in October,” MUFG Global Markets Research senior currency analyst Michael Wan said in an Aug. 29 report.

Dutch financial giant ING said Philippine central bank policy is nearing its inflection point, but easing may not be over.

“Given our current assumptions of softer domestic GDP growth in the second half of the year and ongoing uncertainty around tariff-related impacts on investment growth, we continue to expect a final 25-bp rate cut by the BSP in the fourth quarter,” ING Asia-Pacific regional head of research Deepali Bhargava said in an Aug. 28 commentary.

To date, the policy-setting MB has slashed the key interest rate by a total of 1.5 percentage points (ppt) from 6.5 percent before the easing cycle began in August last year.

For this year alone, the BSP has reduced the policy rate by 75 bps across three consecutive policy meetings in April, June, and August. The remaining policy meetings are scheduled in October and December.