[January 06, 2009] PHILIPPINES RURAL BANKS DEVELOP MORE MICRO-FINANCE SERVICES Tweet CEBU CITY, Jan 06, 2009 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- A Cebu rural banking leader said the sector remained optimistic and was planning to create specific loan products and make more services available to provide rural folk with increased opportunities for business growth. President of the Cebu Federation of Rural Banks Danny Arcenas said the group was looking at introducing separate specific products for house, mobile phone banking, micro-agriculture and micro-insurance sometime this year. Arcenas said these planned new products would add to the rural banking sectors' existing range of microfinance services that included loans, deposits and money transfer services. He said rural banks, as government partners in countryside development, were the micro-financing institutions (MFIs) in areas where commercial banks do not operate. The Rural Bank Association of the Philippines (RBAP) identified some of these areas as farming communities, fisherfolk, and other individuals who could not comply with the stringent loan requirements of commercial banks. A program called Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) said rural banks and other MFIs reach only a third of the more than four million families engaged in micro-enterprises. MABS also cited a 2002 study that placed the potential supply-and-demand gap of microfinance at P17.2 billion (US$367.9 billion), where the projected supply from existing MFIs is P8.8 billion against the expected demand of P26 billion, based on the number of poor families engaged in entrepreneurial activities. Arcenas said his group wants to reach out to the grassroots level with more specific products designed for specific needs. RBAP reported that the sectors loan portfolio increased by 21.5 per cent to P93.6 billion in 2007, due to active lending to the agriculture sector, as well as micro, small and medium enterprises. As of September 2008, MABS-participating rural banks have disbursed over 1.7 million loans totalling more than P20 billion to more than 558,000 new bank borrowers. (PNA) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]