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THE competitiveness of the country’s outdoor advertising agency
will be in peril if Congress continues to suspend hearings on the
proposed Magna Carta for the Billboard Industry, the Billboard
Safety Initiative (BSI) said Tuesday.
BSI, a group composed of the country’s top
five billboard companies who are members of the Outdoor Advertising
Association of the Philippines (OAAP), said that OAAP’s Code of
Ethics should be included in the proposed measure.
“With the growth of our industry, there is a
need for government to assist us in standardizing some of our
practices,” said BSI spokesperson Oliver San Antonio.
San Antonio reiterated that industry leaders
seek three things: passing regulations that would promote public
safety in billboard infrastructure works, include a provision that
would prevent clutter from billboards obstructing one another; and a
Magna Carta that would set the standards and limitations for
billboard regulation for all governmental agencies and
instrumentalities, and local government units.
“Without government regulation, it could
affect the competitiveness of the industry,” BSI added in a
statement.
Recent industry estimates place the entire
industry at close to P2 billion, employing more than 5,000
Filipinos.
San Antonio noted that the Lower House should
resume the congressional hearings on the Magna Carta so that new
entrants and old industry players should be guided by regulations to
follow, adding that the BSI and OAAP both seek to strengthen the
industry through the Magna Carta.
-- James Konstantin Galvez
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