Sunday, May 04, 2008
Financing for small businesses pushed to help cope with crisis
AMID worries about how rising food prices are hurting the poor, President Arroyo challenged cooperatives to expand financing for small and medium enterprises to help them cope.
“There is no better time than now for the cooperatives all over the country to escalate their activities to develop micro and medium enterprises, to help our poor and sustain our economic growth even in these challenging times,” the President said in a message for the 10th annual general assembly of the Visayas Cooperatives Central Fund Federation (VCF).
Cornerstone
“Microfinance is a cornerstone of our fight against poverty,” added the President, in the message read by Presidential Management Staff (PMS) Director General Cerge Remonde.
Remonde stood in for President Arroyo, who failed to attend as the keynote speaker in the Lapu-Lapu City activity because of other commitments.
Microenterprise, which cooperatives are duty-bound to support, has created 380,000 jobs for 2004 to 2007. Credited to the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the term “microenterprise” refers to businesses, usually in the informal sector, that are too small to qualify for traditional bank loans.
In the Philippines, cooperatives and non-government organizations (NGO) are tapped to extend microcredit and other microfinance services to help these small enterprises.
In January and February this year, President Arroyo said in her message, a total of P2.56 billion was released to 114,896 microfinance clients in Central Visayas, creating close to 56,000 jobs. VCF accounted for the bulk of the amount.
Government, she added, released a total of P86.89 billion to some 3.59 million microfinance clients from 2004 to 2007. As a result, 1.56 million jobs were lifted out of unemployment nationwide.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was separately allotted P43 million for its own microlending program, coursed through NGOs.
As of April this year, the VCF has expanded to over 150 member-cooperatives in over a decade of operations, with over P526.9 million released as loans to more than one million individual borrowers. (AIV)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 4, 2008 issue)
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