ZAMBOANGA CITY (MindaNews / 17 July) – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is holding on Saturday a tree planting activity dubbed as “Coins for Trees 2014” in a bid to encourage circulation of coins and at the same time protect the environment, a BSP official announced.
Hermogenes Buenaflor, head of the BSP Economic and Financial Learning Center, said the tree planting activity will be held at the BSP’s mini-forest at Cesar Climaco Freedom Park in Mount Abong-Abong, Barangay Pasonanca, this city.
Buenaflor said it was dubbed “Coins for Trees 2014” since each of the participants will have to pay P50 for each tree they are going to plant.
Buenaflor said the payment should be in coins of different denominations – 10, 5 or 1 peso/s; and 25, 10, 5 or 1 centavo/s.
He said the activity forms part of BSP’s campaign to encourage circulation of coins.
The BSP has noted low circulation of coins, especially of the P10 and P5 denominations, since people are used to saving money through coin banks at home.
“The first objective is to get the money, particularly of lower denomination coins, back into circulation; and second is to plant trees for the future generation,” Buenaflor said.
He said they are targeting to plant on Saturday a total of 300 trees of hard wood species such as Narra and Mahogany.
He said the program is now on its second year, citing they have planted 300 tree seedlings last year.
He said the proceeds of the tree planting activity will go to the Philippine Red Cross (PRC)-Zamboanga City chapter.
