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Friday, January 23, 2004
Banks hope for good poll results
By Cherry T. Lim
THE Cebu Bankers Club (CBC) is keeping its fingers crossed about the May presidential elections as it continues work on strengthening the operations of its member-banks.
“Not only banks are affected by the bad results of elections. If businesses are not doing well, they cannot repay their loans,” said CBC president Jose Camello.
“If the economy is not good, then businessmen won’t borrow and banks won’t make money,” he told Sun.Star in an interview.
This May’s elections will pit the incumbent, Gloria Arroyo, an economist, against a movie star who is a high-school dropout, a former member of her Cabinet, a controversial senator with alleged links to drug lords, and a preacher.
Camello, who is connected with Metrobank, assured that the banking system is healthy, saying every branch of every bank is subjected to regular audit.
According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the net income after tax of Philippine banks grew 16 percent at the end of June 2003 from the same period a year ago. Return on equity improved to 6.1 percent at end-June 2003 from 5.8 percent at the end of 2002 and 3.2 percent at the end of 2001.
The CBC is currently upgrading its credit information automation system to make it easier for Cebu banks to share information on bad borrowers.
The BSP recently reported that Philippine commercial banks’ non-performing loans slid to 14.79 percent of their total loans at the end of November from 15.12 percent in October.
The industry group head also welcomed news that the BSP had lifted the moratorium on branching for merging and consolidating banks, if the area where the branches will be set up has only three or fewer banks.
Exclusive
As regards security, he said the CBC met regularly with the Philippine National Police, and aside from alarm systems, the CBC has now installed an exclusive telephone line for banks to call the police.
“We have a dedicated line direct to the mobile patrol group. We are paying for that,” he said.
There were 7,447 banks in the country at the end of June, of which 4,264 were commercial banks, 1,266 thrift banks and 771 rural and cooperative banks.
(January 23, 2004 issue)
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