Vol. XXI, No. 165 [ Business World Online ]
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
THRIFT BANKS continued to take advantage of the property boom, increasing their lending to the sector by more than a tenth in the last quarter of 2007.
Loans to the real estate industry went up by 11% to P84.4 billion from P76 billion a year earlier, and by 3% from P81.9 billion in the previous quarter, central bank data showed.
Additional exposure for the quarter solely came from real estate loans amounting to P2.5 billion. "On the whole, the industry was able to sustain an uptrend in real estate loans for 19 consecutive quarters now," the central bank said in a statement yesterday.
Real estate lending made up 99.4% of the thrift banking industry’s P84.4-billion exposure to the real estate sector. The remaining 0.6% was in the form of equity investments.
Nearly all of total real estate loans were granted by thrift banks’ bank proper, while a meager 0.1% was lent by their trust departments, the central bank said.
Real estate loans were mostly used to acquire residential units of individual homeowners or borrowers.
These made up 79.6% or P66.8 billion of total real estate loans. The remaining 20.4% or P17.1 billion was used to build commercial real estate properties.
The central bank noted that the ratio of real estate loans to thrift banks’ total loan portfolio slid to 33.5% from the previous quarter’s 34.2% as total loans expanded at a faster rate of 5% to P250.2 billion.
On the other hand, the ratio of past due to total real estate loans stood at 9.4%, better than the previous quarter’s 9.7% and the earlier year’s 10.2% ratio.
Past due real estate loans for the quarter stood at P7.85 billion, slightly lower than P7.91 billion in the previous quarter and P7.68 billion in the same period in 2006.
The central bank traced the better ratio for the quarter to the 0.7% marginal decline in past due real estate loans and the modest growth in total real estate loans.
Likewise, the ratio of past due real estate loans to total loans eased to 3.1% from the previous quarter’s 3.3% and 3.5% in the same period in 2006. — G.S. dela Peña
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