|
THE
Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) will be pursuing
the establishment of four big retirement communities in
different areas in northern Luzon with minimum
investments of at least $20 million each in partnership
with the private sector.
Retired
Col. Fernando Z. Francisco, PRA acting manager, said
these four prospective retirement sites will be located
in Porac and Lakeshore, both in Pampanga, Camp John Hay
in
Baguio City
and the Wallace Air Station in La Union.
These
four areas, he said, are being envisioned to have
housing, health-care and hospitality facilities for
retirees.
Francisco said they want the development to be
accredited with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza)
so they will be entitled to various fiscal perks like
tax breaks and nonfiscal incentives.
With
this, Francisco said they should have a minimum area
size of four hectares and about 50 to 100 retirement
villas each.
This
year, Francisco said the PRA is targeting to attract
3,000 retirees, up from only 1,000 foreign enrollees in
the government’s retirement program last year.
About
half of the retirees that are expected to relocate to
Manila this year will come from Korea, with the rest
from China, Taiwan, Japan, Europe and the US.
On
Tuesday, the PRA signed an agreement with several
private banks that will keep the investments of the
incoming retirees and give them better rates.
“In
addition to giving retirees high interest rates for
their deposits, we are requesting from the banks other
services that they can think of to make the life of
retirees here worthwhile,” Francisco said.
The PRA
partner banks will accept the qualifying
deposits/investments of special retiree’s visa
applicants ranging from $1,500 to $50,000.
The PRA
has accredited 17 financial institutions, all of them
with a CAMELS (capital adequacy, asset quality,
management, earnings, liquidity risk, sensitivity to
market risk assessment) rating of at least 3 from the
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
These
banks will open special signature cards specifically for
retirees without cost to the PRA and the retirees.
Acceptable foreign currencies include the euro, Korean
won, Chinese yuan, Hong Kong dollar, Swiss franc,
Canadian dollar and US dollar. |
