The Philippines central bank is selling its dollar reserves as a defensive measure to manage excessive volatility driven by speculation against the peso, which is hovering near an 11-year low, the bank’s governor said on Sunday. The peso will slide to 51 per dollar by end of 2018, a loss of 1.5 percent from current levels, according to the median estimate of a Bloomberg survey, with a most bearish projection of 56. The currency will be undermined as the current-account deficit widens, while the central bank is slow to raise interest rates from a record low, strategists and fund managers say. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced its expectation of the current account slumping into the deficit territory to $700 million in the red. The Central Bank said this projection is due mainly to the expected faster rate of growth in imports of goods as compared to the exports for next year.