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KEY
officials of the Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank of
the Philippines are hopeful that the Monetary Board of
the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas would approve the
proposal to privatize within three years, noting that
huge commercial banks in rich Middle East countries are
willing to pour in fresh capital.
Jaime
Panganiban, chief executive officer of Al-Amanah Islamic
Investment Bank, said the proposal submitted under the
rehabilitation program includes a phase of privatization
within three years after the Development Bank of the
Philippines (DBP) takes over the bank.
The bank
was first created as Philippine Al-Amanah Bank in 1973.
It was reestablished as Al-Amanah Islamic Investment
Bank under Republic Act 6848 in 2000, with a mission to
promote and accelerate the socioeconomic development of
the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, where the
poorest provinces are located.
“There
are more than a dozen banks and financial institutions
from the Middle East countries that are interested to
inject fresh capital, and these include the biggest
ones,” said Panganiban in an interview in a forum on
Islamic Perspectives hosted Thursday by the Asian
Institute of Management in Makati City.
He said
the bank has prepared a shortlist for these Middle East
banks, but he did not name them.
The
failure to launch the Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank
as a successful bank to cater to the Islamic community
in the Philippines and address lingering poverty and
conflict in Mindanao was discussed during the forum.
Dr.
Mashur bin-Ghalib Jundam, dean of the Institute of
Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines,
said the fight to “preserve the Bangsamoro homeland has
been launched in two means—the armed struggle and
political means.”
He said
the political solution to the lingering conflict in
Mindanao was supposed to have been resolved by the 1996
peace agreement signed by the Ramos administration and
chairman Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation
Front. The agreement provided for the establishment of
an Islamic bank to “neutralize” the Bangsamoro people,
he said.
“But
since then, there has been no Islamic bank in the
Philippines,” he said.
Ikram
Tawasil, acting senior vice president of Al-Amanah, said
since its creation in 1973 as the Philippine Al-Amanah
Bank, the government has only paid up half of the
P100-million shareholding.
In 2000
the bank was reestablished as Al-Amanah Islamic
Investment Bank of the Philippines, with a P1 billion
authorized capital. Under the new Islamic bank, 51
percent or P510 million of the authorized capital was
supposed to be earmarked for subscription of the
national government.
Tawasil
explained that for the Philippine government to
establish its own Islamic bank, it needs to spearhead
its creation by providing P510 million in paid up
capital.
Under RA
6848, P90-million series B shares will be given for
subscription to private shareholders and P400- million
series C shares for foreign investors.
But
since its first inception in 1973 and later in 2000, the
Al-Amanah Islamic Investment Bank merely operated from
its original capital of P50 million and has since then
accumulated a total of P500 million worth of
liabilities, Tawasil lamented.
“The Al-Amanah
Islamic Investment Bank was conceived to be a government
financial institution, but the reality is, aside from
the P50 million paid up by the old Philippine Al-Amanah
bank, not a single centavo was paid by the national
government. Under the scenario, even rural banks have a
larger capitalization than we have. The fact still
remains that we were able to survive with only P50
million in paid-up capital since 1973,” said Tawasil in
an interview during the forum. |
