A government source said yesterday one of the MB members has raised concern over the proposed infusion of 49 percent capital of the BSP on the credit bureau.
"Although the old MB has already approved it, there are several concerns raised by the new Board on the capital infusion of the BSP," the source said.
According to the source, one MB member is instead proposing for the creation of a government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) to handle the operation and capitalization of the credit bureau.
"If BSP will form the credit bureau, it should be either we own it or don’t. If this will not be the case, it can be viewed that they are only using BSP’s name," the source added.
This GOCC, the source said, could also source its credit information from the central bank which is deemed to be most credible source of credit data.
The source said this issue should be addressed before the law is passed in Congress. "As long as it is not yet a law, we can still study it further," the source added.
So far, the source said among the other Asian countries only Malaysia has a credit bureau being run by its central bank unlike Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong which use the private sector to manage its credit information bureau.
BSP’s charter prohibits it to create a subsidiary or a corporation.
The creation of the CIBS Bill is one of the legislative measures being pushed by the BSP. It is envisioned to strengthen the banks’ accreditation features of their clients.
Endorsed by the BSP, the bill creating the Philippines’ first centralized credit bureau will address the serious imbalance in information in the local banking industry.
Based on the proposal, the BSP will own about 49 percent of the credit bureau and other private financial institutions can have a share.
The BSP recently reported that the credit card receivables (CCRs) of the banking industry has expanded by 20 percent to P69.3 billion for the first three months of 2005 from P57.7 billion in the same period in 2004.
Data from the BSP showed that as of end-March 2005, the total CCRs of universal/commercial (U/KBs) and thrift banks (TBs), however, remained flat from the previous quarter which stood at P69.25 billion