WE LOOK to newspapers to provide us with news items which are newsworthy and are written by journalists who, preferably, are free from pressures from those with vested interests.
The snippets from PN’s Lapsus Calami column admirably meet these requirements. For example, last Tuesday’s column reported on a case where the Bank of the Philippine Islands’ branch at the Iloilo Business Park appeared to fall short of what one can expect from a financial institution in terms of smoothly facilitating what should be a straightforward transaction.
I was surprised. Our own experiences with BPI have been that it operates with a pleasant combination of staff friendliness and efficiency. So, the Lapsus Calami piece was newsworthy.
Less newsworthy are those items which are clearly written by an organization’s public relations department. It tries to put a friendly, caring face on a company which in reality is performing with normal commercial avarice.
A bad example of this was PN’s last weekend’s lead article written by Landbank’s PR machine. It spoke of former Hong Kong-based OFW Annie Suela who possibly used her hard won savings from her work as a domestic helper to buy a two hectare watermelon farm in Antique.
She experienced difficulties due to the lockdown, and due in part to transportation problems in getting her watermelons to market.
She obtained a loan from Landbank for which she was grateful. The article portrayed the bank as a benevolent institution.
The loan she obtained was under the auspices of the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF).
At what rate of interest? The article, of course, does not tell us.
The article mentioned that ACEF was “a welcome development for farmers’ financial needs compared to the usual unfair terms of illegal moneylenders.”
Illegal?
Are bank lending terms fair?
Did she have to provide her farm as collateral?
If so, Landbank is more akin to a pawnbroker than a financial institution.
Bank customers are obtaining 0-1 percent per annum from deposits they place with banks.
The banks, operating as a cozy oligopoly, then lend our money at 20 percent or more. The margin is excessive.
A margin of 5 percent would be fair and gives the banking sector an income of P50 billion per trillion pesos lent.
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Does COVID make any difference?
Of course it does.
Small farmers, such as Annie Suela, have experienced horrendous logistics problems. She had difficulties in selling her watermelons.
Senator Francis Pangilinan has called on the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to come up with a program for direct purchases of agricultural products from farmers as a win-win strategy that would allow DSWD to support the marginalized sector of food products while boosting its feeding programs.
Food for thought.
Under COVID, I would expect government departments to operate with more flexibility and nimbleness than they have shown so far.
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Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has recently issued circular number 1098 which imposes a limit on credit card interest charges of 24 percent. It should recognize that this does not correspond to 2 percent per month since when this is applied on a monthly basis amounts to 26.82 percent per annum.
Credit card companies will have to charge less than 2 percent per month to meet BSP’s new requirements.
Will they comply?
What will BSP do if they do not?/PN
