ILOILO City – Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) governor Felipe M. Medalla lauded the development Iloilo City has achieved in the past several years.
Medalla was here recently for the groundbreaking of BSP Iloilo’s new and state-of-the-art building on Broadway Street, Iloilo Business Park in Mandurriao district.
He cited the very first time he went to the city in 1967 when he was doing ship work training.
“Our second or third port of call was Iloilo and I was very impressed. The food was good and people were friendly. It also represented both the best of what is old and the best of what is new,” Medalla said.
His next visit happened, as he mentioned, 20 or 30 years later when he went to the University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo as the university’s Vice President for Planning and Finance then.
His third visit to the city turned out to be the most memorable for him.
“There is one thing I can never forget. We took the plane to Iloilo, travelled in the air for 30 minutes only to be told we’re going back to Manila. That was the longest trip that I have taken that after an hour, I’m exactly where I came from,” he said, citing the reason for such was due to the flooding in the airport.
Ten years after, when he was part of the Cabinet of then President Joseph Estrada, he supported the development project of a new Iloilo airport.
“Little did I know that the airport that we failed to land on that particular day will be this place. Talaga, destiny is destiny,” he added, referring to the site of the old Iloilo Airport where the new BSP Iloilo building will rise soon.
Being back in the city, he concluded that his old memories of what it looked like when he was 17 years old are very different from what they are now.
“I look around how different it is from the Iloilo I saw in 1967 or even the Iloilo that I saw in 1998,” Medalla said.
These developments he wished to be pondered upon by his colleagues in the BSP, particularly the branch in this city as they are set to transfer to their new location.
Meanwhile, Iloilo City mayor Jerry Treñas recognized the change BSP will bring as it moves towards the now-considered business center of the metro – creating more employment opportunities and further prospering the local economy.
“Right on this site, a new building will rise that will pave the way for broad and convenient access to high-quality financial services and consider the interest of the general public,” Treñas said. (AAL, FRG, PIA-6/PN)
