5 financial entities set up P3-B package

The Women's Business Council Philippines (WBCP), the country's leading association of women-entrepreneurs and managers, said the allocation of P3-billion funds for business projects managed and operated by women could help generate more jobs for the women sector mostly in the countryside.

Jessie Asuncion, executive director of the Women's Business Council Phils. (WBCP), said the positive responsive of five of the country's top financial institutions to the clamor of the women sector for more credit facilities could paved the way for the mushrooming of more business enterprises manned by women-entrepreneurs.

Asunsion named the banks willing to start credit financing of women project. They are: Land Bank of the Philippines (allocating some P1 billion funds for its Puhunan Inilaan sa mga Pinay or PINAY program); the Development Bank of the Philippines (P1 billion); the Banco de Oro group (P500 million); the newly-merged Equitable-PCI Bank (P500 million); and the Small Business Guarantee and Finance Corp. (P100 million).

The women sector, she said, has strongly sought for more credit facilities needed for the business, particularly the small and medium-type family-based enterprises in the provinces.

A WBCP study showed that women entrepreneurs are `highly competent managers of money who should have ready access to securing credit from government and private banks.

WBCP, created in 1997 through the initiative of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), said making money available to these women-entrepreneurs will enable them to be fully integrated into the economy."

"We also must see to it that their integration is sustained through a support system that would give them a chance to prove their worth as honest-to-goodness entrepreneurs," she added.