PRESIDENT Duterte has signed an executive order (EO) updating and supplementing the rules on non-mobile advertising signs and billboards to prescribe a minimum standard and harmonize national and local government regulations.
The President, in signing Executive Order No. 165 last March 21, recognized that unregulated advertising signs and billboards pose traffic distractions and hazards, constitute threats to public safety and contribute to environmental degradation and urban blight due to their inappropriate location, site, glare, size, structural configuration and uncontrolled height limit.
“There is a need to update and supplement the rules on non-mobile advertising signs and billboards under the Building Code and its Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR), and to prescribe minimum standards to harmonize national and local rules and regulations as part of the strategies on ease of doing business, and in facilitating self-regulation within the advertising industry,” Duterte said in the EO.
The EO covers all non-mobile advertising signs and billboards, and their support structures, erected and installed, modified, retrofitted, rehabilitated or otherwise altered, and exhibited.
Newly constructed billboard structures must have at least five meters of setback from the frontage property line, measured perpendicularly up to the support structure, while existing static billboards or LED billboards with a setback of less than five meters must comply with the guidelines for size of display surface and height of billboard structures and relevant clearances from high tension wires as prescribed in the Philippine Electrical Code.
It also states that signs and sign structures and billboards must not exceed 250 square meters while LED and other electronic signs must have a minimum display area of 55 square meters and a maximum display area of up to 250 square meters as the site allows, and provided that the sign conforms with structural design and wind load exposure prescribed under the latest edition of the National Structural Code of the Philippines.
Free-standing billboards and other structures are only allowed a maximum height of 36 meters from the established grade, and should not obstruct any public utility and fire exits in accordance with existing laws.
Owners and operators of existing sign and billboard structures are given two years to comply with the foregoing standards on size of display surface and height of billboard.
Funding requirements for the implementation of the EO shall be sourced from the DPWH.
