BSP to build P200-B capital in 5 years

DUMAGUETE CITY—The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) could fully reach its P200-billion mandated capitalization within the next five years, even after sizable contributions to the country’s sovereign wealth fund, a senior official said.

Speaking at a forum for journalists, BSP Deputy Governor Elmore Capule said such an outlook assumed no “extraordinary” events that may disrupt the central bank’s earnings. The amended BSP Charter strengthened the central bank by increasing its capitalization to P200 billion.

Under the law creating the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF), managed by the fledgling Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC), the BSP must remit all declared dividends to the national government to help fund the MIC’s P125-billion initial capitalization.

The transfers are scheduled for the fund’s first two fiscal years. The Monetary Board, the central bank’s top policymaking body, could recommend to the President a reduction in the BSP’s dividend contribution if warranted by economic conditions.

Capule said the BSP’s capitalization would have already reached around P120 billion if it had not contributed to the MIF.

“In that two-year period that we contributed to the Maharlika, that’s roughly around P46 billion. So had there been no Maharlika, then we could have added P46 billion to our capital,” he said.

Mandated equity

“Assuming that we consistently earn the level that we are earning right now, perhaps [in] five years [we can fully raise the mandated capitalization], and [if] there are no other constraints or nothing extraordinary happens,” he added.

Data showed the central bank had earned P108.2 billion from January to October 2025, down 4 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Apart from the BSP, state-run Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines contributed a combined P75 billion to the initial capitalization of the MIC, which has an authorized capital of P500 billion.

Last year, the MIC struck a deal to buy a 20-percent stake in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, the private company operating the country’s lone electricity transmission network, for P19.7 billion.

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The MIC also announced a $100-million investment in a billion-dollar private equity fund that it would create with Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group Co., Ltd.

The MIC likewise ventured into mining with a $76.4-million bridge loan to Makilala Mining Co. Inc., the local affiliate of Celsius Resources Inc.

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