Pag-IBIG admits funding loopholes

THE loopholes in the national housing system are to blame for the multi-billion-peso anomalies like the P9.7-billion questionable loan transactions between private developer Globe Asiatique and the state-run Pag-IBIG housing fund, former Vice President Noli de Castro said Thursday.

“The [fund’s] board has no involvement in the everyday operations of Pag-IBIG,” said De Castro who was chairman of the fund’s board when he was vice president.

Globe Asiatique is accused of using almost 2,000 spurious borrowers to acquire loans from the the Pag-Ibig fund for its housing projects in Pampanga.

At one point, the fund listed 1,965 fictitious borrowers of whom 1,021 had yet to be located while 944 denied having signed loan contracts. Globe Asiatique claimed its borrowers were real and that most were working abroad.

De Castro says the Pag-IBIG fund operates with other agencies like the Home Development Mutual Fund, the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and Land Bank of the Philippines, but their coordination is weak and irregularities are not spotted before they spin out of control.

At Thursday’s hearing, Senator Sergio Osmeña III said the Pag-IBIG fund’s policies left enough room for fraud because it was tasking developers to collect borrowers’ monthly loan amortizations that they may or may not remit to the agency.

He said developers’ credit lines were being extended up to 10 times beyond their limit because of the fund’s lax management of its housing projects.

“These loopholes are inviting trouble”, Osmeña said.

An official of the Home Development Mutual Fund said the agency lacked the manpower to validate the loans approved by the Pag-IBIG fund, and that it allowed developers like Globe Asiatique to forward loan applications to the fund and to collect and remit loan amortizations in its behalf. –Rey T. Salita, Manila Standard Today