Charge that reservation fee for a home

Talk about the rewards of not paying your credit card bills!

Security Diners Club Corp. president Belen Lim has given her nod to a fantastic deal for cardholders who have not been paying their bills for at least four years.

Under this deal, delinquent cardholders can now repay whatever they still owe the bank at face value, stretched out over two years at zero interest.

And, get this, the bank will even give these forgetful men and women gift certificates to a department store of their choice (commensurate to the amount of unpaid bills they have racked up) for agreeing to enroll in this program.

Sorry, cardholders who are already in the process of repaying their delinquent bills – which have doubled, tripled, quadrupled (you get the picture) in value because of penalty charges and escalating interest rates for late payment – are not included in this program. Nor will they get GCs for their effort.

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HSBC (Phils.) senior vice-president for marketing James Benoit has an interesting new use for the bank’s four credit cards. He signed a deal with Robinsons Land Corp. point man for buildings Danilo Ignacio that enables cardholders to charge the reservation fee of any RLC residential condominium project to their HSBC card.

In the case of RLC’s latest baby, Fifth Ave. Place inside Fort Bonifacio Global City, the reservation fee is P25,000.

Yes, yes, Fifth Ave. Place has 38 floors, just like all of RLC’s more recently constructed buildings. The number of floors, however, has nothing to do with numerology and has everything to do with economics.

You see, after 38 floors, the next viable number of floors is 45. (Think of the cost of constructing a stronger foundation to support the structure, more elevators, etc).

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Did you know 1: In a recent private backgrounder given to Lucio Tan, the World Bank cited graft and corruption, high population growth, and pollution as the three major problems of the Philippine economy.

As everybody knows, Mr. Tan turned 70 last month but he didn’t celebrate – following the traditional two-year mourning period for his beloved mother who passed away last year.

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Did you know 2: Asian Development Bank executive director (and former director general of the National Economic and Development Authority) Dante Canlas has gotten the ADB board’s approval to invest $2 million in the Local Government Units Credit Corp. headed by Jesus Tirona.

ADB’s investment translates to up 25 percent of LGUCC’s equity and will probably be taken from the 49-percent stake of the Development Bank of the Philippines, another development catalyst for private sector investment.

As everybody knows, LGUCC helps LGUs like Caloocan City raise funds for projects like public markets and hospitals.