Paranaque Credit Surety Fund seen to spur more business activities in the city

THE Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), together with the Parañaque City government on Tuesday formally launched the Parañaque City Credit Surety Fund (PCCSF).

Mayor Edwin Olivarez and BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr., signed the Memorandum of Agreement at the BSP’s Assembly Hall that formally created the Parañaque City CSF.

It was officially the 44th credit surety fund in the country and the 3rd in the National Capital Region.

Olivarez expressed confidence that the CSF will help spur business activities in the city even as he looks forward toward to further supporting the same in a bid to generate more jobs and employment opportunities for the city residents.

“Coming from the private business sector, I fully understand the importance of credit surety funds like the Parañaque City CSF in providing financial assistance to many start-up businesses that otherwise have no capability to secure loans from formal lending institutions such as banks and the likes” Olivarez said.

“With the Parañaque CSF, small entrepreneurs and traders who have plans of starting their own businesses but don’t have enough capital can now have someone to turn to and in the process they would surely help in providing additional employment to our constituents” he added.

The CSF is a credit enhancement program which aims to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) gain access to formal sources of credit.

It is created by the pooled cash contributions of participating well-capitalized and well-managed cooperatives, local government units and partner institutions and serves as an alternative to hard collaterals and thus improves the creditworthiness of MSMEs who are short of collaterals.

Records obtained from the BSP indicate that as of August 31 this year, the total accumulated loans approved under the CSF Program have reached P1.91 billion of which P1.66 billion have already been released to 14,613 beneficiaries nationwide.

At least 13 of the city’s cooperatives have already signified their intention to join the Parañaque City CSF by pledging an aggregate amount of P4 million while the city government pledged P3 million as the city’s initial counterpart contribution to the Fund.

With the establishment of Parañaque City CSF, stakeholders are optimistic that more MSMEs will be benefited by the program.

Now on its 7th year of operations, the CSF Program has been institutionalized in 30 provinces and 14 cities nationwide.