United Architects of the Philippines, 27th Anniversary Celebration
Good Evening.
I would like to congratulate the Diliman Chapter of the United Architects of the Philippines on your 27th anniversary. I am deeply honored to have been invited to join you in celebrating this milestone in the history of your distinguished organization.
Congratulations also to your new set of officers, headed by your incoming president, Architect Malu Marquez-Gutierrez. I am pretty sure this organization is in very good hands.
You know in my position as President and CEO of the Pag-IBIG Fund, I have plenty of opportunities to meet with various people involved in housing, real estate and construction, especially the developers whom we work closely with in our housing program. But I do not often get the chance to speak to the architects people like you who play a very important role as planners and designers. Which is why I am especially thankful to the UAP Diliman Chapter for giving me the opportunity to address this illustrious group.
I have always had a high regard for architects, as your profession demands that you be both artists and scientists. Indeed, when you think of the wonders of the world, we have to remember that these began as ideas in the minds of the planners and designers who were your forerunners.
Of course, UAP Diliman Chapter counts among its members some of the most outstanding and prominent practitioners of your profession in this country. I know of, for instance, Ronnie Manahan, former Dean of the UP College of Architecture and LIKHA Awardee. Another is Froilan Hong, who worked with Pag-IBIG on the joint housing program with the University of the Philippines. You also have Antonio and Cristina Torralba, who are not only architects but developers as well with Active Realty.
Housing is the common ground that the Pag-IBIG Fund shares with your profession. We work on the finance side, providing funding both to housing developers and to homebuyers. You work on the construction side, creating the designs and plans for new homes. But at the fundamental level, our objectives are the same to improve the quality of people’s lives through quality housing.
In the last five years, Pag-IBIG has made great strides in improving its standing as an institution and in fulfilling its mandates, particularly the housing mandate. I’d like to take this opportunity to report briefly on the Pag-IBIG Fund’s accomplishments.
2005 was a very good year for us in terms of Pag-IBIG’s financial performance. We ended the year with a net income of P7.38 billion, which is the highest in Pag-IBIG’s 25year history. In the last five years, we have seen Pag-IBIG grow from an ordinary workers’ fund into one of the country’s financial giants today. In 2000, our net income was only P2.37 billion, which means that we have made a 170% leap in a span of only five years.
Our assets have also been growing steadily in the last five years. We ended 2005 with P178.3 billion in total assets. This is remarkable because in 2001, the Fund’s assets stood at only P113.77 billion, and it took 20 years to build up that amount. We’re closing to doubling that figure in only five years time.
The Fund’s phenomenal growth also translated into greater achievements in out shelter financing program. Our housing loan program for endusers reached an all-time high last year with total disbursements of P15.30 billion. That’s a 3.41% increase over the previous year. And again, this constitutes a remarkable increase of 200.98% compared to our housing loan program five years ago which was able to release P5.08 billion. This improvement can be attributed to the reforms we have introduced to the housing loan program, particularly our interest rates which are among the lowest in the market.
The Pag-IBIG Fund is now the single biggest provider of mortgage financing in the country. In 2004 alone, we accounted for 34.29% of the total mortgage financing in the country, with total housing loans exceeding that of GSIS, SSS, NHA and NHMFC combined. Our performance in this area is only surpassed by the banks, but only if you compute their collective housing loan releases.
We expect to further improve our accomplishments in housing as we have just begun implementing the amended guidelines to our housing loan program. I will not give you the full details here, but suffice to say that we have restructured our housing loan packages to offer lower interest rates and longer payment terms, depending on the loan amount. We have been observing that private banks are getting more and more aggressive with their housing loans, and we saw the need to change our guidelines to be more competitive and to offer a better deal to our members.
I mention these things not so much to trumpet our financial stability and accomplishments, but to give you an idea of the resources that we are making available to the housing industry.
I said earlier that we both share the vision of improving the quality of people’s lives through quality housing. We also share the knowledge that we still have a long way to go to realize this vision.
When we speak of housing in the Philippines, I think we can say about architects something similar to what we usually say about doctors. Just as many Filipinos live and die without ever having seen a single doctor, similarly, a great number of our countrymen who belong to the poorest of the poor build their homes without ever consulting an architect. To the Filipino as do-it-yourself architects, the concept of designing a home is simple: build walls and roofs that are sturdy enough to withstand the typhoons and the summer heat. Scant attention is paid to aesthetics, if at all.
This is especially and painfully evident in the numerous informal settler communities, or what we used to call squatter areas, that we still see today in many parts of Metro Manila and other urban centers. Blighted communities made up of ramshackle shanties hastily put together using all sorts of scrap materials, with no forethought whatsoever as to how the structures are arranged or organized. Theirs is the architecture dictated by need and limited resources.
I long to see the day when Filipinos will no longer have to make do with this kind of architecture. I long to see the day when every Filipino family will be able to leave the job of planning and designing their homes to the professionals like you.
As members of the UAP, and especially of one the best Chapters of your organization, you all play an important role in the housing industry and the provision of decent shelter for Filipino families.
I urge you to support the housing sector. As professionals, it is also to your advantage to see a more active housing market, as it means more business for you. But beyond that, as Filipino citizens, it is also in your interest to have a vibrant housing industry, which translates to more and better homes for our countrymen, and greater economic growth for the Philippines through downstream economic activities generated by this sector.
I know you are all very much aware of your great responsibility, both as individual architects, and as a community of professionals. The fact that you have invited me to this event indicates that you are also keenly aware of your part in the national shelter program.
There is still so much that we need to do, and we can only accomplish our goals if we work together.
Thank you very much, and more power to the UAP Diliman Chapter.