Wednesday, July 29, 2009 [ manilatimes.net ]
Sen. Richard Gordon said Tuesday that the government’s housing policy was “a dismal failure” as housing agencies are sitting on billions of pesos worth of collection from delinquent borrowers.
Gordon, chairman of the Senate blue-ribbon committee, said the agencies should have been more circumspect in granting loans to persons who could not repay their loans. “The government cannot carry the burden of people who are not paying their housing loans. The government loses the money while the borrowers are laughing,” he said.
Joseph Peter Sison of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp. said that 13,000 of the 53,000 borrowers from 1988 to 1995 did not pay even once since they took out their loans. He also said that 48,000 have arrears of up to four years.
Federico Laxa of the National Housing Authority said that the NHA could not collect from 84 percent of their loan beneficiaries, who are all informal settlers. The NHA used to receive P500 million a year from the annual budget but this was increased to P2.5 billion because of the removal of squatters from areas bear the North and South Rail projects.
Vice President Noli de Castro, a resource person at the Senate inquiry, said that if the totality of the loans extended through the Unified Housing Loan since its inception is to be considered, then there have been some failures.
“It is difficult to immediate foreclose properties because families are staying there, but if there such a law, we will implement it,” De Castro said.
He said that Meralco and the Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System could immediately cut off their services to customers who could not pay on time.
At the hearing, it was shown that many of the delinquent borrowers of the NHMFC that have been turned over to Balikatan owned big houses.
“They must be children of God! I was shocked, but I still blame the NHMFC for granting loans to these borrowers,” Gordon said.
-- Efren L. Danao
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