BPI Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala addresses the crowd during the launch of “Salapi” in the bank’s main Cebu City office. “If education is mixed with history you create something that is lasting,” he says. (Photo by Arni Aclao of Sun.Star Cebu)
STRESSING the importance of history and education among Filipinos, the Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) launched two projects, the coffee table book “Salapi” and the BPI Library Cebu, last Thursday.
“Salapi” is a 280-page volume written by Jose Eleazar Reynes Bernales and Carlo Ledesma Apuhin. It traces the development of Philippine money over the years and features rare images from the collections of BPI and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Money Museum, as well as from local and foreign money collectors.
“It is a comprehensive look at how money has evolved with the times and how it has come to reflect the nation’s pulse and economy,” the BPI said.
The book, according to Bernales, collates in seven chapters the important information on the evolution of money from the pre- to postcolonial periods.
It also features the P100,000 bill, the world’s largest banknote recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records. The banknote is 356 millimeters wide by 216 mm. and
was issued during the Centennial of Philippine Independence in 1998.
BPI produced limited copies of the book priced at P3,000 for hardbound and P2,500 for softbound. It will be available in BPI branches.
BPI president Cezar Consing said they plan to distribute “Salapi” to major libraries in the country.
In the same event, the BPI also opened BPI Library Cebu, the first business library in the province. The library is co-managed by the University of San Carlos (USC) Library System under an industry-academe linkage agreement between the BPI Foundation Inc. and USC.
The library is located on the third floor of BPI Cebu main branch at the corner of Magallanes and Burgos Sts. It is open to the public for free. It carries books on economics, finance, management, and trade, including a section especially dedicated to Cebu culture and a reading area for children. The library can also be a venue for workshops.
BPI Library-Cebu was conceived after Cebu City Michael L. Rama requested the BPI to donate the area to the City Government to use as the city library, said Florendo Maranan, executive director of BPI Foundation.
Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, BPI chairman, said they acted on the request because education is one of the prime advocacies of the Ayala Group.
“If education is mixed with history you create something that is lasting,” said Ayala, whose bank is the oldest in Southeast Asia.
“As we grow the number of the books, this (library) will come alive,” said Consing. He donated one of his favorite business books, “The Limits of Money.”
BPI tapped the Filipinas Heritage Library to conceptualize and design the library. Aside from Cebu, BPI also has a library in Infanta, Quezon, operated by the municipal government of Infanta.
Maranan said they will continue to evaluate proposals for libraries.
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on January 25, 2014.
