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IT has
become clear the hoped-for double-digit lending growth
would not be forthcoming very soon, with data from the
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showing the banks’
outstanding loans as of November 2007 having grown at an
annual clip of 6.9 percent to P1.907 trillion.
This was
higher compared with the 4.4-percent growth registered
in the same month a year ago and broadly similar to the
7.1-percent growth posted the previous month, BSP
Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said on Tuesday. Still,
it wasn’t double-digit growth.
He
previously expressed optimism the banks’ lending
activities would pick up in keeping with the
higher-than-forecast expansion of the economy in the
first nine months of 2007.
Seasonally adjusted lending declined slightly by 0.6
percent from the 3.1-percent growth in the previous
month, BSP data show.
Tetangco
said bank-lending growth lifted by 7.1 percent
year-on-year in November from 3.2 percent in October as
the banks’ placements with the BSP’s reverse repurchase
(RRP) facility rose.
The RRP
window is more known as the borrowing window of the
central bank.
This
means that a significant portion of the lending
activities for the period involved not private-sector
borrowers but the borrowing activities of the BSP
struggling to contain, of all things, peso-liquidity
growth in the financial system.
Put
another way, there was much money flowing through the
system during the period “borrowed” by the central bank
for policy purposes, rather than being actually used by
the country’s entrepreneurs to create more jobs and
generate higher growth.
“Lending
to all sectors of the economy continued to grow except
for agriculture, fisheries and forestry (AFF) and
manufacturing.
“The
utilities (electricity, gas and water) sector led the
expansion in lending, posting a robust growth of 32.9
percent from 6.2 percent in the previous month.
“This
was followed by the transportation, storage, and
communications sector at 30.8 percent; wholesale and
retail trade at 10.1 percent; and mining and quarrying
at 7 percent.
“Meanwhile, lending to the financial institutions,
real-estate and business services (net of RRPs);
construction; and community, social, and personal
services sectors posted positive but decelerating growth
rates compared to the levels in the previous month,”
Tetangco said. |
