Loans to informal settlers reach P155 million in first semester

Low-cost housing loans granted to informal settlers to assure their land tenure and housing security under the government’s Community Mortgage Program (CMP) have reached a total of P155.35 million during the first semester of the year, according to the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC).

In a progress report to Secretary Michael T. Defensor, presidential housing adviser and chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, Lawyer Angelico T. Salud, NHMFC president, said that the CMP loan availments are equivalent to 124 percent of the average semestral loan levels attained during the 12 and a half years of CMP implementation by NHMFC.

Salud also said that NHMFC is currently processing CMP loan applications with a total loan value of P557.56 million, including P55.59- million vouchered accounts in the payment process; P240.75 million with funding commitment lines; and P261.22 million whose documentary requirements are still for completion by the borrower-community associations of informal settlers.

These loans in process will finance 124 urban poor housing sites for a corresponding 14,063 family-beneficiaries.

The semestral loan availments bring to P3.12 billion the cumulative loans granted to informal dwellers belonging to the lowest 30 percent of the income population, for a corresponding total of 874 housing sites financed and some 109,791 family-beneficiaries, he cited.

The CMP loans granted during the first six months include P19.38 million in January: 18.67 million, February; P40.82 million, March; P11.10 million, April; P17.23 million, May; and P48.14 million in June.

The scaled-up implementation of CMP is an integral part of President Arroyo’s poverty alleviation thrusts, which among others, aim at the redistribution of physical resources to the marginalized sector through affordable financing to assure the sector’s security of land tenure and access to decent shelter, Salud added.