Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Felipe M. Medalla said the six-hectare Security Plant Complex (SPC) in Quezon City with estimated value of P8billion will not be considered “for sale” under his watch.
“We have not yet discussed what we’ll do,” he told Manila Bulletin. “Maybe, that’s better answered by the next Monetary Board,” Medalla also said. He is serving the remaining 12 months of service of former BSP chief, Benjamin E. Diokno, now the finance secretary.
Medalla, who was Monetary Board member for 11 years before he was sworn in as governor on July 1, said that he will continue what has been started by Diokno and before him, the late Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. whose six-year term is served out by two other governors, namely Diokno and now Medalla who will retire July 2 next year.
When asked the same question before he left the BSP, Diokno said they could explore other options for the 43-year old SPC once its printing and minting operations are relocated to the 31-hectare New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac, where the BSP will build a P25-billion central bank complex.
Diokno said the BSP may choose to keep or sell the Quezon City facility, or find a private sector partner for the prime property’s joint development. The SPC is located at the center of East Avenue, along a major highway leading to EDSA Avenue.
It was Espenilla who began the BSP’s relocation of its SPC to a larger area outside of Metro Manila in 2018. Espenilla had considered selling the sprawling real estate to raise additional cash for the new printing facility. At the time, Medalla was Monetary Board member and part of the group that approved the relocation.
When Diokno took over the BSP in 2019, he continued with the plans for the relocation and he picked the Tarlac property as the new site for the currency production facility.
The BSP broke ground on this project in September 2019. The BSP’s contract to lease the area is worth P2.73 billion which it will pay the Bases Conversion Development Authority after signing a 50-75 year lease.
Meanwhile, the BSP paid P151 million for the architectural and engineering design of the new complex while the construction of the modern and eco-friendly facilities will cost P25 billion.
The New Clark project is currently in its design phase and the BSP said this should be completed in the fourth quarter 2022. After the approval of the detailed designs and plans, the BSP will open the bidding for the general contractor.
The start of construction, after the bidding process, could begin as early as first quarter of 2023.
Due to the two-year delay because the Covid health crisis, the contract for the winning bidder Aidea Inc. for the architectural and engineering design services of the complex, was only completed March of this year.
Meanwhile, the P25 billion approved budget will cover the construction of an “inclusive, green, and smart” office building, the BSP Museum, an academic building, a sports complex, data and command centers, and commercial stalls. Aidea will design all publicly accessible and semi-restricted areas.
The Tarlac printing facility once operational is intended to have the full capacity to print all of the country’s banknotes requirement, currently at five billion pieces in all six denominations.
The central bank has modernised and expanded SPC from 2014 when the Monetary Board approved a 10-year plan but it was in 2018 when the need for a bigger facility to handle the currency requirements of a growing economy became more apparent.
The SPC, built in 1978, has the capacity to produce 3.6 billion pieces of banknotes per year. It has invested over P5 billion to buy two new superline banknotes printer, the first was bidded out in 2011 and the second in 2013. The installation and commissioning was completed in 2017. This raised the central bank’s printing capacity from 1.8 billion pieces of banknotes to 3.6 billion at the end of 2017.