Inside a Monetary Board member’s office

MANILA, Philippines — Amid the ghost employee scandal hounding the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, The STAR ventures inside the offices of members of the Monetary Board to find out how many they’re allowed to hire, and who.

The Monetary Board is the highest policymaking body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and is responsible for the conduct of monetary policy and supervision of the financial system. Its chairman is the BSP governor, with five full-time members from the private sector and one member from the Cabinet.

Each member of the Monetary Board has an assigned office on the fifth floor of the BSP headquarters in Manila. The members serve six-year terms. 

According to multiple sources, including past Monetary Board members (MBM), each board member is allowed to have up to 10 employees, including office staff.

These employees are all co-terminus, whose entrance and continuity in the service is based on the six-year term of the MBM. These staff do not become permanent central bank employees.

A former MBM said members can even hire up to 50 employees for their office, as long as it’s within the allocated budget given to the board member. 

However, an MB office does not need 50 employees. Nowadays, there is an average of around six to 10 employees working under an MBM. These can include a chief of staff, a head executive assistant, a secretary, an admin or a technical staff, an economist, a lawyer and a driver or bodyguard. 

Some of these roles can overlap as well. An MBM’s chief of staff can also be the lawyer. 

According to a source, MBMs are allowed to hire family members who are also co-terminus. These employees usually handle more confidential and sensitive information which the MBM cannot disclose to someone they do not trust.  

However, the source said, there have been very few family members or confidential employees under an MBM in recent years.

A separate source said the allocated annual budget is the same for all MBMs, and is used mostly for the salary of their personnel and office expenses.

“The salary (for an MB staff) is based on the position in the BSP scale (which has grade and steps). So, if the employee has high qualifications, he/she has