PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino 3rd in a statement urged overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to avail themselves of the government’s newly launched P2-billion low-interest reintegration loan program.
The OFWs and their families could borrow P300,000 to P2 million at 7.5 percent a year payable within seven years, Aquino added.
This is for the Filipinos to start up and support the development and operation of small enterprises when they return from their overseas jobs, he said.
“This reintegration fund is intended to give you [OFWs] the opportunity to start your chosen businesses and not need foreign deployment anymore to help your families,” the President said.
Under the loan guidelines, qualified borrowers are OFWs who are either once or active members of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).
The reintegration loan program will not use loan conduits whose administrative costs swell interest rates to as much as 22 percent, Mr. Aquino also said.
“The program offers different enterprises flexible and easy loan term payments for its OFW availees,” OWWA said in a statement.
OFWs who were interested to borrow would be assisted by OWWA and its agency, the National Reintegration Center for OFWs, in putting together a business plan required by the Development Bank of the Philippines or the Land Bank of the Philippines to support applications and release of the loans.
On Tuesday, the President launched the P2-billion reintegration loan program on the occasion of the First National Congress of OFWs and their Families during Migrant Workers Day.
The P2-billion fund consists of P1 billion from the trust funds of the OWWA and another P500 million each by DBP and the LBP.
The President said that OFWs would be assisted by other government agencies in growing their enterprises.
Advices in business development would be provided by the Department of Trade and Industry, through its entrepreneurship development and technical assistant program.
Educating OFWs in choosing investment options in agribusiness and aquaculture will also be provided by the Department of Agriculture, while Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will conduct a financial literacy campaign. –Mayvelin U. Caraballo, Reporter, Manila Times
Invoke Article 33 of the ILO constitution
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