Binay vows major policy changes in housing sector

BACOLOD City, Philippines —Vice President and housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chairman Jejomar Binay vowed yesterday to review policies and institute initiatives toward a more sustainable housing sector.

“Organizational reforms in key shelter agencies are underway,” Binay said in a keynote address to the national convention of Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA) at the L’Fisher Hotel here.

He assured housing developers that while “the need for housing is not diminishing in urgency and volume,” the housing sector must also grow in the process.

Binay said he understand the problems of housing developers, foremost of which is lack of funds. “I know that the reason developers are hesitant and apprehensive in building more houses is the perennial lack of funds,” he said.

He said he is “interceding, if not, intervening, to accelerate action in the other groups and sectors of the housing.”

As for the Home Mutual Development Fund (Pag-IBIG), Binay said: “I have adjusted the target of housing loans from 75,000 housing units to 150,000 units and P30 billion in new loanable funds that will be made available to buyers and developers.”

“This is ambitious, I know, but I must also know that if we must make Pag-IBIG responsive to the growing interests of stakeholders like you, if we must make you true partners in development, we must put in courageous interventions in unprecedented proportion,” Binay told the developers.

“We must deliver more houses to fill the gap between housing stock and housing needs, which is about 350,000 each year,” he said.

“In Pag-IBIG, the investments portfolio in non-related housing business will significantly be shifted to investments in housing development,” he said.

The concern over the lack of funds in Pag-IBIG for housing developers were due to the disparity in the distribution of loanable funds by the regions and to the developers, he said.

“The basic defect in the concentration of loanable funds to a single developer is the inconsistent application of a single borrower’s limit (SBL) policy,” he said.

“My predecessors had adopted an SBL for institutional loans of P3 billion for a single developer-borrower. On the other hand, the end-buyers loan did not have an SBL limit, with the justification that the borrower under this window is not the developer but the buyers themselves,” Binay added.

“This is incorrect since the buy-back guarantee requirement under this window is a contingent liability of the developer and therefore should be part of a borrower’s limit or restraint,” he explained.

“The grant of more end-buyers loan was imprudently tolerated in the absence of a prudent SBL policy,” Binay stressed. – With Pia Lee-Brago –Danny Dangcalan (The Philippine Star)