Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said there is a need to improve credit information in the country to encourage banks and other lending institutions to lend more to different sectors. Espenilla said that instead of forcing banks to lend to clients, the better approach was fixing the barriers to lending. Espenilla said even if lenders were able to comply, they would not know the risks and they might actually lose a lot. The total loanable funds generated by the banking industry increased 24.3 percent to P3.53 trillion last year from P2.84 trillion in 2015. But the combined allocation of loanable funds from agriculture and agrarian reform of 13.83 percent last year was way below the minimum threshold set by the law.

Source: The Standard July 09, 2017 12:00 UTC