January – December 1998 The year 1998 was a year of increasing interest rates. It was only by the end of the year that there was a noticeable plunge in interest rates. During most of the beginning of the year, interest rates were moving up more than they were going down due to many economic pressures such as the Asian financial crisis which triggered a rapid slow down in economic growth. The Philippines was very much affected by …showed first 75 words of 978 total…

…showed last 75 words of 978 total…As a response to this, the government allowed banks to increase interest rates to control money supply to strengthen the peso. The Ramos administration also is suffering a liquidity problem and to solve this it has resorted to increasing interest rates on treasury bills to as high as 20% in other to attract capital. (http://www.geocities.com/ CapitolHill/Lobby/4677/rates.htm) Annual 18.392 Jan 21.143 Feb 18.286 March 16.568 April 14.876 May 13.700 June 12.885 July 13.093 Aug 13.189 September 12.979 Oct 12.975 Nov 12.475 Dec 12.401 Quarterly 20.432 17.044 15.277 14.404