Declaring that government has achieved a landmark development goal by increasing the amount of state-administered business loans to poor folk from P8 billion to over P168 billion in a span of nine years, Malacañang has announced that close to ten million Filipinos have benefited from President Arroyo’s pro-poor credit, technology and marketing assistance programs for micro-enterprises since 2001.
Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) said recently that government afforded some 7.1 million underprivileged micro-entrepreneurs loans amounting to P168.6 billion from 2001 to 2009, paving the way for the creation of new jobs for more than 2.8 million unemployed or underemployed poor folk through its microfinance program during the timeframe.
The NAPC chief said the government, through its partner financial institutions, had extended microfinance loans amounting to P 8.1 billion to some 1.4 million Filipino micro-entrepreneurs from July 2001 to June 2004 in keeping with the President’s 2001 state-of-the-nation address (SONA) pledge to boost loans to underprivileged business owners and encourage the development of the country's microfinance sector.
"The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the People’s Credit and Finance Corporation (PCFC) meanwhile report that our partner microfinance institutions had issued more than P160 billion in microfinance loans to some 5.7 million underprivileged business owners from July 2004 to December 2009," he added.
NAPC Assistant Secretary Dolores de Quiros-Castillo said enterprise development is a key component of the Arroyo administration's poverty reduction program.
"Filipino micro-enterprises are not only among the most dependable pillars of the national economy, they also create a vast number of jobs for the poor each year," Castillo said, adding that the Arroyo administration's focus on financial services for underprivileged Filipino entrepreneurs has led to significant reforms in the country’s microfinance sector.
"For instance, our partner microfinance institutions no longer require collateral for loans to targeted entrepreneurs. This makes their services more accessible to poor folk," she said.
Panganiban meanwhile clarified that the operations of the government's partners in the microfinance sector are not state-subsidized.
"Government-subsidized loans to the poor proved to be a drawback to our rural development efforts back in the 70s. Having learned from that experience, we no longer subsidize the operations of our partners in the microfinance sector today," the NAPC chief said.
JULY 2008
