International banker completes 7-man Monetary Board

MANILA, Philippines — International central banker Eli Remolona Jr. has been appointed as the newest member of the Monetary Board, completing the seven-man roster of the policy-making body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

BSP Governor Felipe Medalla Jr. told The STAR that President Marcos has signed the appointment papers of Remolona.

Remolona will serve the unserved term of Medalla, who now chairs the Monetary Board. Medalla was first appointed as Monetary Board member by the late president Benigno Aquino III in July 2011 and was reappointed to a second six-year term by former president Rodrigo Duterte on June 29, 2017.

Medalla said Remolona, who could still be reapppointed to a second six-year term, has resigned as professor of finance and director of central banking at the Asia School of Business in Malaysia.

Remolona also sits on the Council of Advisers of the Academy of Finance in Hong Kong and is research associate of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) at the Crawford School of the Australian National University.  He is also associate editor of the International Journal of Central Banking.

Before assuming his new post, Medalla said Remolona needs to quit as independent director of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI). Remolona has been an independent director of the bank since April 2019.

Remolona spent most his career in central banking, 14 years of it at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 19 years at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel and Hong Kong.

He joins former BSP Governor and Monetary Board chairman Benjamin Diokno, who now heads the economic team of President Marcos as finance secretary, former trade secretary Peter Favila, former Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. vice chairman and president Antonio Abacan Jr., former agriculture undersecretary and International Rice Research Institute deputy director general Bruce Tolentino, and former Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. director Anita Linda Aquino.