FOR the first time ever, the Home Development Mutual Fund, better known as the Pag-Ibig Fund, has released over P100 billion worth of home loans in a year.
The agency achieved the results despite the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, and a year earlier than its target date.
In a statement, Pag-Ibig said it had released P97.28 billion worth of housing loans in 2021.
“And with interim releases for loans for house construction and renovation amounting to P3.5 billion, total releases have reached P100.8 billion -- the highest amount ever released by the agency in a year,” it said.
The Fund released P63.75 billion in home loans in 2020 and P86.74 billion, the agency’s previous record high, in pre-pandemic 2019.
Pag-Ibig Fund chief executive officer Acmad Rizaldy P. Moti said the amount released last year went toward the purchase of a record-high 94,533 housing units, nearly a quarter or 22,028 of which were socialized housing units for members from the minimum-wage and low-income sectors.
The agency financed the acquisition of 63,750 housing units in 2020.
Moti said when home loan releases hit P57 billion in 2016, the agency set what it deemed to be an “impossible” goal of P100 billion home loan releases by 2022, not expecting that it would be able to hit the target a year earlier and even during a pandemic.