A VILLAGE leader and head of the Association of Barangay Captains in Monkayo, Compostela Valley was shot dead on April 21 by still unidentified men. Compostela Governor Jayvee Tyron L. Uy, in a statement released Sunday, condemned the killing as “not just a personal offense” but an “affront” to the province and its people. Mr. Uy described Mr. Daanton, who previously served as a community relations officer of the provincial government before running for an elected position, as “an honest and trustworthy colleague” who wholeheartedly dedicated his life in public service.” The governor called on authorities to resolve the case. — Mindanao Bureau
THE BUSINESS sector in Zamboanga City has asked the local government to evaluate the multi-million closed circuit television (CCTV) pilot project undertaken during the previous administration in terms of efficiency and effectivity before mandating private establishments to install their respective CCTVs. Pedro Rufo N. Soliven, president of the Zamboanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation Inc., said it is unclear whether the P22-million worth of CCTVs set up the within the city center have been of any use. “What happened to it? Is it still functioning? Did we use these equipment to prevent crimes? Did we use its footages as evidence?” said Mr. Soliven, who is also a member of the Zamboanga Peace and Order Council. Mr. Soliven said it would be but fair to the business community to have this review before implementing the local ordinance requiring them to set up CCTVs in their establishments. The CCTVs were part of a P117-million project in 2015 intended to beef up security surveillance in the city. — Albert F.Arcilla
A LEADER of the New People’s Army (NPA) and one member were killed in an encounter with the 39th Infantry Battalion and 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur on April 21, Saturday. Another NPA member was arrested, according to the military. Seized were one tampered M16A1 rifle, four improvised explosive devices, and two rifle grenades, among others. On the government side, Corporal Kenneth James Balicot was slightly wounded and has already been given medical assistance. — Minde Nyl R. dela Cruz
According to the 2017 Gender Statistics on Labor and Employment (GSLE) report released by Philippine Statistics Authority, these are the average working hours per week of male and female employees in major industries in the Philippines. NOTE: Average hours worked is the ratio of the total hours worked of employed persons at work to total employed persons at work per major industry group and survey round. — Mark T. Amoguis / BusinessWorld Research RECOMMENDED READ: Philippines still most gender-equal country in Asia — report
https://www.canva.com/design/DAC1kUayRpE/view
Kylie Verzosa is not a noob when it comes to business.
The 26-year-old celebrity, who won the Miss International title in 2016, hails from the family who owns Forest House in Baguio City. She also has a degree in business management from the Ateneo de Manila University.
Adding to her endeavours outside the pageant arena, Verzosa is now also a managing director at PropertyAccess.co, a website that allows users to connect with real estate brokers.
“I come from a marketing background,” she told SparkUp during the launch of the platform on April 19 in Makati City. “Ever since I was young, I always helped out in the family business and I would do small things like manning the registration. I would also serve as a waiter for short time.”
Verzosa’s role in the tech startup company doesn’t end in just shelling out money. She said she is involved in developing marketing strategies and assuring the security of the website.
PropertyAccess.co aims to digitize local transactions in buying and selling properties amid the country’s booming real-estate industry.
In the last quarter of 2017 alone, for example, Metro Manila has recorded the highest number of condominium units ever sold in the capital region. According to Colliers International Philippines, about 52,600 units were bought during the period, which was significantly higher than the previous year’s 42,000 units sold.
“We always saw that there was a demand, it’s just that people don’t know how to find an agent because everything is traditional, you have to go to a real estate brokerage firm,” Regina Rocio, co-managing director, said.
PropertyAccess.co is also banking on the booming internet penetration in the Philippines. The real estate sector was seen benefitting from online purchases growth in the country last year, as many Filipinos resorted to the digital space to buy products—including properties. For instance, Lamudi Philippines—PropertyAccess.co’s counterpart in the market—has recorded about five times growth in its online traffic since 2014, generating 15 million user visits in 2017.
“We understand that it’s the age of digital marketing, so we want to take advantage of it,” Rocio said. “It’s the digital world, so I think the Philippines is ready for it since most people are now online. You can buy groceries and clothes online, why not property?”
The platform is free for end-users while brokers have to pay depending on their chosen subscription package. A one-month subscription costs ₱1,799 while three- and six-month subscriptions are available for ₱1,399 and ₱1,699, respectively. All packages come with unlimited listings.
Property brokers can join by creating their own profile on the platform, which includes key-ing in their license number and birthdate to assure their credibility. Verification both of membership and listings take about a week.
PropertyAccess.co boasts of its loan calculator feature as the selling point that sets its apart from its counterpart. The calculator enables users to know the amount of loan that they need to apply for from different banks depending on the price of the property they wish to buy and their preferred tenure.
For 2018, the company aims to generate at least 100,000 listings and tap 10% of the total number of real-estate agents in the country. It also plans to launch the platform in Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” wrote G.K. Chesterton in Alarms and Discursions, in an entire chapter dedicated to the pressed curd foodstuff. He goes on talking about how poets never write about cheese at length, despite the word having “every quality which we require in exalted poetry:” it is a “short, strong word,” that “rhymes to ‘breeze’ and ‘seas’.”
It’s a pity that G.K. Chesterton, who died in 1936, will never be able to see the day cheese takes a step closer to being romanticized. In particular, its pairing with chocolate: the quintessential food item associated with love.
Joe Baird, cheese expert and consultant for dairy organizations in America, heralded this during his recent trip to Manila last week when the California Milk Advisory Board, which represents California’s more than 1,300 dairy farm families held a tasting event. California, after all, produces 2.4 billion pounds of cheese and over 250 varieties and styles.
Cheese and chocolate, he says, is a pairing that enjoys great attention in California, ever since the trend began about eight to 10 years ago. “Cheese has different levels of strength, same with chocolate,” he says. “Cheese is made of one ingredient or multiple ingredients. Same with chocolate, which is primarily composed of the cacao bean.”
Bars with high percentages of chocolate, he added, go great with blue cheeses because they balance each other out. The younger chocolates, meanwhile, go with the younger cheese. “It’s a great marriage for each other,” he notes. “It’s sweet and salty.”
Art Samantha Gonzales
And indeed, the pairing is heavenly. The experience begins when you snap a thin bar of chocolate. Depending on the amount and quality of cocoa butter, as well as how finely ground the chocolate particles are, the snap will will be either gentle or firm. Put it in your mouth and it begins to melt: smooth, creamy, and perhaps with a little nutty feel.
Then, the cheese. You might think the two would contrast each other—the former being associated with desserts, and the latter having a more pronounced salty taste. The cheese is relatively softer, chewier, and even gummier, which cuts through chocolate’s sweetness.
But once its highly complex taste—sweet, sharp, grassy, nutty, spicy, acidic, fruity, bitter—travels around the mouth, its creaminess melts with the creaminess of chocolate. Like two lovers who have gone around the world searching for their one true pairing, the formerly polar opposites embrace each other.
“Cheese is addictive. There’s nothing else like it,” Baird said. “You can have a bottle of wine, a winemaker will put a label on it, and then they will sell it with attention to the label,” he added. “But if you see a big wheel of cheese, even without a label, it’s already impressive.” The same logic, perhaps, can be applied to chocolate.
Perhaps we owe this discovery to millennials. With 90% of California dairy farms being family-owned, millennial descendants are slowly taking over the business.
“They grew up in a more artistic generation and they also grew up eating these specialty cheeses as food for entertainment,” Baird said. “Social media is a huge way of finding what’s popular. The millennial generation has started eating better than people in their 40’s. For those taking over the business, sky’s the limit. They’re creating new things and following what’s trending as well.”
But at the end of the day, no matter what the internet says, “it’s the way you taste the cheese, what you think it tastes like,” Baird says. Like love, finding solace in the pairing of cheese and chocolate may be a bit like finding a match in an unlikely place: there’s nothing else like it.
California dairy products, with the Real California Milk seal, are available in leading supermarkets such as S&R, Robinsons Supermarket and SM.
By Bjorn Biel M. Beltram, Special Features Writer
Before becoming an Uber driver full-time, Ismael Mamaril Villanueva spent 30 years working for the government at the Bureau of Customs. Tired of the negative publicity that had plagued the bureau since time immemorial, and his children having finished their education, he decided that a change of pace was what he needed, a relief that Uber had provided him.
“I could feel that I was getting old,” Mr. Villanueva told BusinessWorld in an interview. “With Uber, I could take an early retirement.”
Coming upon the now-closed Uber Partner Center along Shaw Boulevard in Mandaluyong City, he lamented that the ride-hailing services firm had ceased operations in the Philippines. In his own words, he was an “Uber-loyal” for more than a year now.
Since he had his own car, Uber provided him with a relatively easy job that he can do on his own time without answering to anyone. He also enjoyed receiving compliments in the Uber app from his customers (Great Conversation! Excellent Service!), a feature that the Grab app sorely lacks.
At the end of March this year, the ride-sharing firm Grab announced that it has acquired its primary competitor Uber’s Southeast Asia operations, leaving many drivers like Mr. Villanueva without much choice but to switch platforms. As of April 16, Uber Philippines has shut down despite orders from the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) to continue operating independently pending the antitrust body’s review.
Grab (MyTaxi.PH, Inc.) has now become the biggest ride-sharing app in the Philippines, an event that the PCC fears will lead to a “virtual monopoly” and increased prices.
Jeffer Carlo Ragil, who had been a driver for both Uber and Grab, fears the same. “I really don’t know what will happen,” he admitted in an interview.
“It used to be that depending on demand and pricing, you can choose between the two apps. There was a choice. If there’s just one, then the consumers could suffer,” he said.
Mr. Ragil noted that Grab is noticeably better for the drivers due to higher prices, lower thresholds for incentives (Grab drivers get bonuses for making 40-50 trips a week, as opposed to Uber’s 60-70), and the ability to view their riders’ destinations and cancel trips. However, for the longest time, Uber had a lot more demand.
“What works for us drivers isn’t the same as what the customers want,” he said. A worthwhile service
Mr. Ragil chose to start driving full-time after spending 11 years working for the car battery manufacturer Motolite. It was not particularly hard to make the switch, he said, as both Uber and Grab had simple registration processes for drivers. He already had the car; all he needed was the paperwork to start driving.
“I like the freedom. The feeling that my time is my own. I could choose not to work whenever I want to. Right now, I’m waiting on a relative to finish a dialysis, so I thought why not work for an hour or two?,” he said.
“The people you get to meet also make the job worthwhile,” he said, telling the story of how he once had the pleasure of escorting members of the Mocha Girls to the airport one early morning.
“I remember it because it was one of the smoothest trips I’ve ever had. I thought we wouldn’t make it at first, but there was almost no traffic. We made the flight with time to spare. I couldn’t believe it, first because I was driving the Mocha Girls, and second, because EDSA was empty.” Seizing opportunity
Rogelio Rivera, who had worked various jobs in the past, the most recent of which had been a salesman, found that he was drawn to the unpredictability of working for Uber and Grab.
“I get easily bored,” he said in an interview, noting that he rarely stays in one job for over a year. “I like being challenged.”
Mr. Rivera doesn’t own the car that he drives, and so he needs to meet a boundary each day if he’s to make any profit. Along with the fuel expenses, that means he has to make over P4,000 a day if he wants to see any money for himself.
“It’s not hard. Plus it lets me practice my driving,” he said. “I haven’t really driven that much before because I had a motorcycle.”
Mr. Rivera admitted that his goal was to be good enough at driving vehicles with manual transmission that he could take up a job driving trucks for a construction firm near his place in Rodriguez, where many real estate firms are developing new properties.
He argued that his goal is the reason why he had no qualms about switching to Grab after driving under Uber for three months. Filipinos are resourceful people, he said, and if Grab ended up becoming a monopoly and becoming bad for the public then Filipinos will find a way to adapt.
“I try to take any opportunity that’s presented to me,” he said. “That’s what all any of us can do, given whatever situation.”
Filipinos are receptive to the idea of purchasing vehicles running on electricity, even more so than their Southeast Asian peers. That’s one of the key findings of a study carried out by the business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan and commissioned by the Japanese automaker Nissan.
The study titled “Future of Electric Vehicles in Southeast Asia,” released in February of this year, found that 46% of the polled prospective car buyers in the Philippines, 44% in Thailand, and 41% in Indonesia are open to considering a purchase of an electric vehicle (EV). The respondents in these countries are, as the study put it, “the most eager to buy EVs.”
In the six Southeast Asian countries covered by the study, including the aforementioned three, plus Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, 37% of prospective buyers are willing to purchase a vehicle powered by electricity.
These findings bode well for EVs, which are hailed for their environmental benefits and cost-saving potential, especially as batteries become cheaper. But the study also uncovered factors that may hinder the translation of the openneness to buying an EV into an actual purchase in the region.
“While there is significant demand potential for EVs, there are adoption barriers as well. Lack of requisite knowledge underlies the slow uptake of EVs in recent years,” the study said. “Customers are also unsure about the safety standards EVs adhere to,” it added.
But the barrier that 60% of the respondents consider to be a “very important” barrier is neither safety nor operating costs nor high purchase price. “Range anxiety is the main drawback for the adoption of EVs,” the study said. This is a worry over running out of power before reaching a destination or a charging station.
Range anxiety may be overblown, at least in the US, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sante Fe Institute, a nonprofit research firm. “What we found was that 87% of vehicles on the road could be replaced by a low cost electric vehicle available today, even if there’s no possibility to recharge during the day,” Jessica Trancik, senior author of the study published in the journal Nature, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report.
Prospective Filipino buyers of EVs vehicles can make a case for why the range anxiety they may be feeling is not overblown, based on a glaring reality: There aren’t a lot of charging stations around.
The government is doing something about it. In 2017, the Department of Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi said that an Ad-Hoc Technical Working Group (TWG) was laying the groundwork for the installation of e-vehicle charging stations. TWG was created by Mr. Cusi himself to find out how suitable gasoline stations are as charging areas for EVs. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources announced last month of this year its plan of setting up quick-charging stations at its offices in Cebu and Davao. It already has one at its office in Quezon City.
The private sector is also helping address the need for charging stations. Last year, Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. signed an agreement with QEV Philippines Electromobility Solutions and Consulting Group, Inc., a local start-up, to install electric vehicle charging posts at its gasoline stations.
SM Supermalls inked a similar deal with QEV, allowing the joint venture between Filipino businessman Enrique M. Aboitiz and his Spanish business partner Enrique Bañuelos to install fast chargers made by ABB, a Swiss automation giant, at its malls.
“The installation of EV charging infrastructure will support the proliferation of the EV industry as well as aid QEV’s mission to reduce carbon emissions and make use of a more sustainable source of energy in order to have cleaner and greener cities,” QEV said in a statement. It may also help ease – or eliminate altogether – the range anxiety Filipinos may have over electric vehicles.
By Romsanne R. Ortiguero
Growing abundantly in the Philippines and the rest of Asia, bamboo is known for its versatility, multi-functionality, sustainability, and even for its tensile strength that can match that of steel.
In the local setting, this sun-loving, hyper-growing type of grass is commonly used for construction, furniture-making, handicrafts, and even as food. With seemingly endless possibilities for bamboo, the use of this natural material in modes of transportation like bikes has also been explored.
Just a few years ago, bicycles made of bamboo by Bambike, originated by Bryan Benitez McClelland, gained popularity. According to Bambike’s website, bamboo possesses qualities that make it the perfect for crafting bike frames. The specific species of bamboo that Bambike uses “are at least as strong as steel in tensile strength and have higher strength-to-weight ratios.”
In 2017, Filipino company Banatti (derived from the colloquial word “banat”, to push it, or in road use, to floor it) introduced The Green Falcon, an electric café racer motorcycle that used bamboo as one of its materials for design.
Asked why he thought of using bamboo as a material for the Green Falcon’s body shell, Banatti President and CEO Christopher Lacson told BusinessWorld in an interview, “It’s a very strong yet flexible material. In many cases, it is comparable to steel. Bamboo has never been used for building a motorcycle body. We can call it a disruptor. It’s a conversation starter. The Green Falcon was designed and built to inspire, to ignite, or spark and motivate our country men: the young, the old, our leaders.”
The entire body shell of the Green Falcon is made from bamboo — weighing under seven kilos, which is at least 30% to 40% lighter compared to fiber glass, the material often used for building a motorcycle’s shell. Because the Green Falcon uses bamboo, and is purposely pared down in design, it weighs approximately 50kg less than that of a similarly sized gasoline motor version. Since it is light in weight, it is easier to move it, and thus, is speedier because it requires less power.
Mr. Lacson said they are using the tinik variety of bamboo, which takes between three to four years to grow, and is quite sustainable to use.
Also, Banatti’s motorcycle is electric, leaves no pollution, and hardly makes any noise. The bamboo shell used is water resistant, having been treated with water proof coatings and marine epoxies.
“It’s already road-worthy. It has a city-geared speed limit of 60kph, and can traverse up to 45 to 50 kilometers in range,” Mr. Lacson explained.
The lightweight, pared down design, city speed limit, and range were all inspired from the café racer culture, which started in the 1960’s. Café racer bikes are known to be lightweight, optimized for speed, and are made to run in short distances (usually used to race from café to café).
“Café racer has always been one of our guiding design principles. A café racer is only what it needs to be and not more. We were not engineering it for long drives. We designed it for city use; for café racer riding. We speed limited The Green Falcon because that is the speed limit in the city. You can’t run 160kph here and, realistically, most of city riding is in traffic,” Mr. Lacson said.
With the Green Falcon, Mr. Lacson hopes to spark productive conversations and hopefully, to inspire citizens and the government to work on pertinent issues such as pollution, sustainability, and greener modes of transportation, among others.
“It’s unlike anything else. It’s a different way of looking at issues through design. We purposely wanted to inspire people to see things differently, to put things in a different context, to think about transportation and materials from a different perspective,” he said.
Meanwhile, for his other projects that hope to initiate conversation regarding issues in the transportation sector, Mr. Lacson also acts as the CEO and design director of Modular Energy Efficient Portage Inc. (MEEP), which has designed the Meepney transport system. The locally patented “plug and play” transport system can be placed in a community with designated charging stations where modern electric jeepneys can swap batteries and run on set routes.
By Mark Louis F. Ferrolino Special Features Writer
One big problem that hampers the Philippines in maximizing its economic potential is the worsening traffic congestion in the country’s capital region. The traffic jam, which was only experienced on the stretch of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) years ago, is now being felt in almost all major thoroughfares in Metro Manila.
According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the country is now losing P3.5 billion a day due to the traffic situation in Metro Manila, 45.8% higher than the estimated P2.4 billion in 2012. The updated figure was presented by JICA Philippines chief representative Susumu Ito during the 36th Joint Meeting of the Japan-Philippines Economic Cooperation Committee last February.
The amount can rise up to P5.4 billion a day by 2035 if transportation infrastructure in the region will not improve, Mr. Ito said.
Heavy traffic in Metro Manila not only affects the economy but also the Filipino commuters. Before Filipino workers could reach their workplaces, they have to spend time waiting beside the roads or at terminal stations to ride a public transport. Thereafter, they have to endure the hassle of getting stuck in the traffic, which often consumes their time that could have been used to do something productive.
Traffic congestion is paralyzing almost everything. Thus, the need for new and modern transport infrastructure, which will ease congestion and improve connectivity in and out of the capital region, is substantially needed.
One of the legacy flagship projects of the Duterte administration under its “Build, Build, Build” program is the construction of the Metro Manila Subway Project (MMSP), which is expected to ease traffic gridlock in the metropolis and address the linked problems in environment and land use.
MMSP is the first ever approved underground rapid transit in the country proposed by the Department of Transportation (DoTr), headed by Secretary Arthur P. Tugade.
The phase one of the 30-kilometer subway project will run from Mindanao Ave. in Quezon City to Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Parañaque City. It will consist of 14 stations located in Mindanao Ave. – Quirino Highway, Tandang Sora, North Ave., Quezon Ave., East Ave, Anonas, Katipunan, Ortigas North, Ortigas South, Kalayaan Ave., Bonifacio Global City, Cayetano Blvd. and FTI, with a provision for a five-kilometer extension and two additional stations to connect with Manila Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line 1.
DoTr Director for Communications Goddess Hope Oliveros-Libiran told BusinessWorld in a Viber message that the project allows consistent travel from Quezon City to Taguig City in just 31 minutes, serving 370,000 passengers per day on its opening year.
The Philippines’ first subway, which is estimated to cost P355.6 billion, is dubbed by some as ambitious and the project of the century.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia believes that the Philippines is ready for this infrastructure project, starting from the funding up to the maintenance operations. He told BusinesWorld in a text message that it has “more beneficial impact on the economy” once completed.
MMSP will be funded by the Japanese government through a loan from its aid agency JICA. Last March 16, the Philippines and JICA signed the first tranche of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) loan, amounting to 104.53 billion yen or about $935 million. It carries an interest rate of 0.10% per annum for non-consulting services and 0.01% per annum for consulting services, to be repaid within 40 years (inclusive of a 12-year grace period).
The target groundbreaking for the project is set on the fourth quarter of the year, which is months earlier than planned, and is expected to be competed in 2025. Meanwhile, partial operations of three stations is set on the second quarter of 2022.
Ms. Libiran said that the manpower for the construction of the project will come from the Japanese contractor. She added that the cooperation of other government units, including the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and local government units (LGUs), will be needed for the management of traffic during the construction.
CURRENT monetary policy settings remain appropriate despite some turbulence in local financial markets, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) chief said on Friday.
“We have to look at the fundamental drivers and not be too quick to play the blame game,” BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla, Jr. said when asked about policy direction in the face of a tumbling stock market and a depreciating peso.
Local stocks have shown weakness for much of this month, so far, with the Philippine Stock Exchange index hitting a one-year low on Thursday before staging a modest recovery on Friday that, nevertheless, did not stop another week-on-week slide.
At the same time, the peso has been trading at the P52 level this month and has been dubbed Asia’s worst-performing currency.
The central bank governor said the BSP does not have to react to these latest developments, adding that markets have the tendency to self-correct.
“[T]he key drivers of equity markets are corporate fundamentals including relative valuation that links potential earnings to share prices,” Mr. Espenilla said in a WhatsApp message to reporters on Friday.
“There is market discipline to this. Corrections happen as a reality check. That’s healthy and makes for sustainability,” he added.
“In my view, the sum of BSP actions remain appropriate for the situation.”
The policy-setting Monetary Board (MB) opted to keep borrowing rates unchanged at 2.5-3.5% during its March 22 policy review, unfazed by accelerating inflation despite analyst observations that the central bank could already be behind the curve as far as interest rate normalization is concerned.
Instead, policy makers cited robust domestic economic activity and little concern over inflation’s pick-up as reasons for keeping policy interest rates steady for now. ‘IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION’
The Monetary Board has said it was ready to “take immediate and appropriate measures” to carry out the BSP’s mandate of price and financial stability, arguing that currently robust economic activity can weather the impact of higher interest rates.
Mr. Espenilla said that the BSP is prepared to raise benchmark interest rates should price increases spread through the economy, but noted that latest inflation expectations show the annual pace of overall price increases still well within 2018’s 2-4% target band.
Latest available Philippine Statistics Authority data show headline inflation staying within target range at 3.8% year-to-date despite March’s 4.3% which pierced that band and was the fastest in at least five years.
Highlights of the March MB meeting which the central bank released on Thursday show monetary authorities then believing first-quarter gross domestic product growth — which the PSA is scheduled to report in the morning of March 10, just hours ahead of the third MB policy review for 2018 — “to be consistent with the government’s target” of 7-8% annually until 2022, when President Rodrigo R. Duterte ends his six-year term.
“We’re satisfied that TDF (term deposit facility) rates have been moving in the right direction, as guided and enabled by our open-market operations. This is having the desired effect on other market rates that in turn help regulate the economy and control inflation,” the BSP chief added.
Several analysts have pointed out that the BSP should already tighten rates to contain inflation and temper rapid credit growth, although the monetary authority has said that the Philippines is far from overheating. LENDING STANDARDS STEADY
In a separate development, the BSP also reported unchanged lending criteria among Philippine banks in the first quarter.
Universal and commercial banks said they maintained the standards they used in assessing loan applications of both consumers and businesses, according to results of the BSP’s latest Senior Loan Officers’ Survey.
This marks the 36th straight quarter that borrowing standards were kept “broadly unchanged” for both corporate and individual clients, the BSP said, although some reported that they grew more stringent in granting consumer credit.
A total of 30 of 35 big banks responded to the poll.
Around 92.3% of the lenders said did not change criteria in deciding on loan applications filed by companies.
This came as banks had a “steady outlook” for the economy, a stable profile of borrowers and an unchanged risk appetite. This was seen through narrower loan margins, bigger credit lines and simpler collateral requirements.
Some 78.9% of the banks also reported that they used the same standards in deciding on personal loans, reflecting their bullish outlook for consumer activity.
At the same time, “credit standards for housing loans and personal/salary loans tightened due mainly to respondent banks’ reduced tolerance for risk,” the BSP said, noting stricter conditions for home loans and shorter maturities for personal loans.
Most banks said they expect to keep lending standards steady this quarter. — Melissa Luz T. Lopez
