MONDAY, 09 JANUARY 2012 19:44 JUN VALLECERA / REPORTER
THERE is now a nationwide recognition framework for banks and other
lending units that engage in micro loans, their efforts to be cited as
exemplary in a field that began almost as an outreach program but which
has now become a P7-billion industry benefiting more than a million
borrowers.
The Paeng Awards, "a nationwide awards program recognizing outstanding
microfinance institutions who, as a result of their pioneering
initiatives, have been able to carry out exemplary work worthy of
emulation, having been able to create positive changes in a community,
sector or village that otherwise would not have occurred," the Bangko
Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said in a statement released on Monday.
The annual event will be launched today, Tuesday, at the BSP's Executive
Business Center along Roxas Blvd. in Manila to honor Rafael Carlos B.
Buenaventura, who started it all in 1999 when microfinance was more a
buzzword than an actual program that would change the lives of its
beneficiaries.
Buenaventura, "Paeng" to constituents and friends, served as BSP
governor from 1999 to 2005, and was perhaps its most-loved chief executive.
He pursued the microfinance program early on in his term and pushed for
its extensive adoption, recognizing this could be a powerful
anti-poverty tool.
"This is the first major undertaking of the Rafael B. Buenaventura
Microfinance Resource Center Foundation Inc., otherwise known as the RBB
Foundation. The foundation deemed it appropriate to highlight the role
of pioneers in the development of the microfinance industry," the BSP said.
The different microfinance councils, banking associations and other
foundation partners were to nominate microfinance institutions the
winner of which will be announced late in November coinciding with the
death anniversary of the former BSP governor.
At the launching, BSP Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr. will also sign a
memorandum of agreement with Microfinance Data Sharing System or MiDAS,
the first-ever ratings unit looking over the creditworthiness of the
various microfinance units now in operation, among other functions.
MiDAs is an initiative of seven of the largest microfinance institutions
whose aim is to address the rising problems of over-indebtedness, ensure
client protection and maintain a high degree of quality of the loan
portfolios of micro-finance institutions.
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