MANILA – Banks liquefied 82 percent more of their outstanding loans at end-August, thus allowing them to increase lending.
In a statement, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said the amount of rediscounted peso loans in the first eight months of the year surged to P29.349 billion from a year ago’s P16.108 billion.
Of this year’s total amount of rediscounted loans, 75.4 percent went to commercial credits, 3.2 percent to agricultural and industrial credits, and 21.4 percent to other credits consisting of other services (8.4 percent), capital expenditures (6.5 percent), housing (4.2 percent) and permanent working capital (2.3 percent).
Availments of the BSP’s dollar loan rediscounting facility by 10 commercial banks however fell 21 percent to $123.1 million this year from $155.9 million in the same eight-month period last year.
The dollar rediscounting facility benefited 28 exporters.
For this month, the BSP set the peso rediscount rate at 3.75 percent for all maturities effective July 30, 2012. This is in line with the Monetary Board’s decision last July to cut its overnight borrowing rate to the same level.
For the dollar rediscounting window, the rate is set at 0.23050 percent per annum. This is based on the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate at end-August.
source: interaksyon.com