Honeylet, Kitty eye investments in Marawi bonds

Next year’s issuance of the first tranche of the “Marawi bonds” meant to raise additional funding to rebuild the war-torn city in Mindanao will get a big boost, thanks to the participation of the President’s common-law wife and their daughter.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III told reporters last Friday he “asked Ms. Honeylet [Avanceña] and Veronica to invest some of their savings in Marawi bonds, which will soon be available to retail investors online.”

Dominguez met with Avanceña and her daughter, also known as Kitty, last Thursday when they visited the historical Ayuntamiento de Manila in Intramuros, which also houses the offices of the Bureau of the Treasury.

Finance Assistant Secretary Antonio Joselito Lambino II told reporters the Marawi bonds—IOUs to be sold to small investors—would augment the concessional financing pledged by development partners and multilateral institutions in Davao City early this month.

The government had secured P35.1 billion in pledges—P32.7 billion in concessional loans and P2.4 billion worth of grants—for Marawi’s rehabilitation and reconstruction, but these commitments would be spent on areas outside ground zero covered by the Bangon Marawi Comprehensive Rehabilitation and Recovery Program.

Dominguez had said these pledges would begin to pour in by year-end or early next year.

As such, Dominguez said the Treasury was still studying the “exact timing” when it would issue about P13 billion in Marawi bonds.

“We still have the budget in place and actually, we have until 2022 to complete the funding. So we will review the pledges that we got and see the exact timing of them so that we can time the Marawi bonds as well,” Dominguez had said.

The Marawi bonds would be issued in tranches, as Dominguez had noted the recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts would also be implemented over a period of several years.