Home loan payments collected by the Home Development Mutual Fund, commonly known as Pag-IBIG, reached record breaking levels in the five months of the year to P31.97 billion, reinforcing the agency’s financial sustainability.
In a statement, Pag-IBIG said the January to May figure is 15 percent or P4.22 billion higher than the amount collected in the same period last year.
The amount is also a record-high in terms of home loan payments collected by the agency for any January to May period.
“We are happy to report that our total collections for the first five months of the year already stand as the highest in our history,”said Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development Secretar Jose Rizalino Acuzar, who also heads the 11-member Pag-IBIG Fund Board of Trustees.
“Strong collections not only reinforce Pag-IBIG Fund’s financial sustainability, but also benefits our members because the amount we collect are then ploughed back to our housing portfolio so that more members can avail of our home loans,”he added.
Acuzar said the strong collections is one of the agency’s ways of heeding President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s call in solving the country’s housing backlog under the Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino or 4PH Program.
Meanwhile, Pag-IBIG Fund Chief Executive Officer Marilene Acosta noted that the continued strong collections in home loan payments during the period drove the agency’s performing loans ratio (PLR) higher at 92.53 percent as of May.
The latest PLR is 184 basis points higher than the 90.96 percent PLR as of December last year.
“We are grateful to our members for their efforts in fulfilling their payment obligations on their loans. Their on-time payments are clearly reflective of their trust in us as we continue to provide relevant programs and services to respond to their needs,” Acosta said.
“Our strong collections and PLR would allow us to not only address the loan needs of our members, but also to keep our interest rates low despite the prevailing market conditions. These are all part of our Lingkod Pag-IBIG commitment to provide accessible and affordable home loans for each Filipino worker,”she added.
Pag-IBIG earlier reported its home releases also reached a record-high in the first quarter of the year as it grew 14 percent to P27.57 billion.
Acuzar said earlier that the amount of home loans released by the agency during the first quarter enabled 21,870 members to acquire their own homes.
He further noted that out of this total number, 2,968 or 14 percentare Pag-IBIG Fund members from the minimum-wage and low-income sectors who were able to secure a total of P1.26 billion in socialized home loans.
Acosta noted that the agency’s performance at the start of the year shows that it has sustained the momentum of its record-high achievement in 2022, when it released a record-high P117.85 billion in home loans for the year and surpassed the one-trillion peso level in total home loan releases since its inception.
“After coming off our best-performing year in 2022, we have yet again set another record-high in housing loan takeout for the first quarter of 2023. Our strong performance in the housing loan front is an indication of the trust of our members in our programs. More importantly, our record-high numbers reflect the increasing number of Filipino workers we have enabled to gain new or better homesOur members can rest assured that we shall do our best to make our housing loan programs, as well as all our other services, continuously accessible so that they may fully enjoy their benefits as Pag-IBIG Fund members,” Acosta said.
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