By: Bernadette E. Tamayo
[ journal.com.ph ] June 16, 2008
GOVERNMENT financial institutions have agreed to relax the rules on loan restructuring to help families who availed of low-cost housing projects find easier terms to pay their monthly amortization.
Concerned GFIs came up with a formula that will help 265,927 borrowers and 849 community associations stay in their homes after Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri introduced amendments to Senate Bill 1987 or the loan restructuring law. Qualified accounts are those where the original principal does not exceed P2.5 million.
Zubiri said that SB 1987 will help borrowers more than the GFIs. “We’re saying to GFIs to hold off initiatives to collect delinquent payments and wait for this new scheme. We want them to collect as well as assure that our housing problems will not be compounded with housing ejections,” he said.
Zubiri noted that various GFIs have started implementing their respective restructuring programs, but “bringing them together as a group had forced them to compare their programs with others. Many relented to the more accommodating terms to help their borrowers.”
The bill covers delinquent socialized and low-cost housing accounts with the Government Service Insurance System, Social Security System, Home Development Mutual Fund, National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation, Social Housing Finance Corporation, Home Guaranty Corporation and the National Housing Authority.
“Common to government and industry is defining delinquent accounts as those with six months unpaid amortizations but, we chose to be liberal and went beyond business-as-usual.”
The Senate adopted the following amendments introduced by the Committee on Housing: starting the coverage of delinquent accounts to those that have three months of unpaid monthly amortizations, down from six months; extending the maximum term of the restructured loan up to the difference between the borrower’s age at the time of application and 70 years, up from 65 years; excluding from coverage those accounts wherein the housing units have been abandoned for one year, from two years; and excluding from coverage those accounts under the HGC mortgage guaranty program.
The same panel report also recommended the condonation of all penalties and surcharges and condonation of a reasonable portion of the interest of the housing loan, as determined by respective GFIs and agencies, of which all accrued interests shall be treated as non-interest bearing principal to be equally repaid, and all corresponding penalties and surcharges due from NHMFC and SHFC to their funders may likewise be condoned by their respective funders.
____________________________________________________________________
