FROM a handful of microlenders whose loan outstanding was a few million pesos in 2000, the number of microlending institutions today have swelled past 200 and their loan portfolio has reached P6 billion.

In ceremonies that recognized outstanding microentrepreneurs this year, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. lauded the efforts of microentrepreneurs in helping themselves and their communities.

Tetangco cited the important role played by banks in helping small borrowers improve their lives.

Whereas there were only a few banks that dared to engage in microlending in 2000, there are 229 of them helping the poor help themselves and their respective communities at present.

According to Tetangco, these microlenders extended micro loans to 780,000 borrowers whose financing needs are too small for regular banks to bother.

“Significantly, our microborrowers have also become net savers; their deposits with banks as of December 2007 have reached close to P2 billion,” he said.

From near helplessness, these borrowers have transformed their lives and the communities in which they live into vibrant places of business and commerce, Tetangco added.

“Not only have they been liberated from the cycle of poverty, they are attaining financial security for themselves and their families,” Tetangco said.

Microfinancing is an advocacy program Tetangco instituted since 2005 when he became BSP governor.

THE World Bank board of directors has “unanimously” approved the National Roads Improvement and Management Project Phase 2, or NRIMP 2, and imposed several anticorruption measures to ensure that the projected is shielded from corrupt and colluding people.

ASIA Trust Development Bank, a thrift bank whose shareholders include the two state-owned pension funds and the Asian Development Bank, is for sale.

THE government bared on Wednesday the likelihood of increasing its foreign borrowings this year to its original plan of $1 billion.

The amount was previously halved to $500 million on account of low interest rates in the country.

THE peso yesterday extended its plunge, falling 19 centavos from the previous day’s close, after jitters set in following reports of low returns in local equities and low volume of overseas remittances, currency traders said.

FROM a handful of microlenders whose loan outstanding was a few million pesos in 2000, the number of microlending institutions today have swelled past 200 and their loan portfolio has reached P6 billion.

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has eased the rule on proof of identity and cut the number of ID cards that clients must show from the mandatory two to one.