Micro-credit bank to launch in the Philippines with church support
Manila has announced the launch of a micro-credit bank modelled on the Grameen Bank of Nobel Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus. A Catholic man will run the bank that will be based in Pangasinan.
Manila (AsiaNews) The Filipino government has decided to set up a micro-credit bank modelled on the Grameen Bank of Nobel Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus. The project will be run by a Catholic and supported by the Church in the Philippines.
The news was announced yesterday by the Speaker of House of Representatives, Jose de Venecia Jr. In a press statement, he said urban and rural organizations will open the First Micro-Finance Bank, patterned on the "bank of the village" in Bangladesh of the Bengalese Yunus, who "helped lift his people out of poverty" via small loans without any request for guarantees.
De Venecia said the proposed Micro-Finance Bank in the Philippines will be headed by Jose Oviedo, a prominent Catholic lay leader from Dagupan diocese, north of Manila. Some 3,000 groups in Pangasinan and in Dagupan City will launch the micro-finance bank next month for poor people of all faiths.
The Speaker said the micro-finance bank to be set up in Pangasinan, north of Manila, has already been licensed by the state-owned Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), and it will start out with capital of 17.5-million Filipino pesos. Dagupan's Catholic Church cooperative has donated one million pesos, while the rest came from local governmental officials, social workers, drivers, farmers, fishermen, labor unionists, and activists. De Venecia said he will also contribute with donations to launch the new Bank.
He said "these banks should be established in the regions of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao to complement the work of the rural banks, owned by a few families, which are currently in trouble because of bad management of loans".
De Venecia also urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to build a national network of micro-finance banks in the Philippines.
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