Binay pitches private-govt shelter alliance

Saturday, 21 August 2010 10:17

Vice President and housing and urban De-velopment Coordinating Council (HUDCC) Chairman Jejomar C. Binay is batting for a strong partnership between business and government, saying it is vital to ensuring economic development.

In a speech before members of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. on Friday, Binay stressed the need to develop an investment-friendly business climate particularly for the housing sector.

“The ideal relationship is one of cooperation and coordination, in which government and business remain in charge of their respective areas of special competence,” he said.

“Your role is to create goods and services for the economy. The role of government is to provide the best possible environment for your noble enterprise,” he added.

In Davao Binay also met with the Organization of Socialized Housing Developers of the Philippines (OSHDP), where he again stressed the importance of public-private partnerships.
He said the government should explore options and mechanisms where poor homebuyers can buy with their services and the government can pay developers with tax incentives.

Developers want ‘super’ housing agency
Developers in their first-ever national meeting in Davao City on Thursday said a Cabinet-level Department of Housing is needed “to orchestrate” all the policy and operational matters of the basic housing need of a growing population, a backlog that has already ballooned to 3.8 million units.

The First OSHDP and HUDCC National Convention at the Grand Men Seng Hotel, attended by more than 250 developers of socialized and low-cost housing projects, was scheduled to present this clamor to Vice President Binay.

It is one of many issues and concerns that the more than 150 members of OSHDP want addressed by Binay and the executives of the different government agencies, including the five shelter agencies and financial institutions.

“We would like them to respond to the issues and concerns that we would raise in this convention,” said Santiago F. Ducay, vice president of OSHDP, which organized the August 19 and 20 convention.

Under the proposal that would be contained in a resolution at the end of the convention, Linda A. Tan, national president of OSHDP, said the umbrella agency HUDCC would be elevated to a Cabinet department and the National Housing Authority (NHA), the Pag-ibig Fund, the National Home Mortgage Finance Corp. (NHMFC), the Housing Insurance Government Corp. (HIGC) and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) would all be housed under it.
The NHA is mandated to take charge of the resettlement and housing of the informal sector; the NHMFC on the secondary-mortgage sector; the HIGC on insurance of housing units; and the HLURB on regulatory monitoring and enforcement.

“If the other sectors have their departments like Agrarian Reform, Environment and Public Works, why not a department for this very basic need of the Filipino households?” Ducay said.
Aside from housing all the needs of the sector under one roof, “another advantage of the department would be helping the sector access a bigger budget,” he said.

Aside from expecting a policy statement from Binay, OSHDP wants the shelter agencies and the agencies like the Social Security System (SSS) to give their statements and policy commitments to issues that OSHDP said hounded the socialized and low-cost housing sector and prevented a robust atmosphere to meet the backlog and the yearly demand of about 900,000 units.

Tan said Oriental Mindoro Rep. Rodolfo G. Valencia told the convention on Thursday he has already crafted the bill seeking these measures, and that would also seek to compel the SSS to follow again its mandate to set aside 30 percent of its income to housing. This particular proposal was favorably responded to by the Pag-Ibig Fund, she said.

The SSS participation would complement and expand the coverage of the socialized and low-cost housing program of the government, she said, “adding to the establishment of sustainable fund.”
Also under the bill, Jefferson Bongat, convention organizer, said it would seek out the use of P2.5 billion of the Pag-ibig Fund that formerly went to pay taxes and which has since been exempted.
“We hope that the government would be amenable to the plan of VP Binay that this money be used to further lower the interest in housing loans for socialized and low-cost units to less than the current 6 percent, to about 3 percent to 5 percent,” Bongat said. “This would be a big boost to the sector, and encourage more people to avail [themselves] of the housing program.”

Also, Ducay said, “We would be looking at the commitment of the national and local governments to identify idle government lands that we could use for housing.” This would bring down further the cost. A socialized housing unit would now cost P400,000 at a lot size of 40 square meters in Metro Manila, and to a little bigger of 75 to 100 square meters in the provinces with a monthly amortization of P2,800.

If the land were available for a much cheaper cost, “then it would bring down the cost further by more than 20 percent,” Tan said.

In his speech at the convention, Binay also pushed for strengthened lending to and collection from the middle class, especially overseas Filipino workers. He added that by keeping the money circulating in the home-lending system, more people can borrow, buy and amortize houses.
“A strong middle class-based home-ownership system will enable the government, in partnership with the private sector, to address the housing needs of the less-capable sectors of society,” Binay said.

He saw the need to develop standardized housing-components industry and encourage inventors to make use of local and native technology. This, he said, will lessen dependence on imported raw materials and open the door for the country’s own product exports.

Meanwhile, the Vice President also distributed land titles to beneficiary-families in barangay Agdao as part of the HUDCC’s drive to bring housing to the less fortunate.

Binay led the awarding of Transfer Certificates of Titles (TCTs) to 49 family-beneficiaries after full payment of their respective loans under the Community Mortgage Program (CMP).
The CMP is an innovative mortgage-financing system where residents of blighted or depressed areas or the urban poor may acquire a privately owned tract of land through the concept of community ownership.

“I hope you would continue to strive to meet your obligations under this program so you can attain full security in land and shelter,” Binay told the awardees in Filipino.

Since the start of its implementation in 1989, the Social Housing Finance Corp., program administrator, has granted a total of P8.5-billion loans to secure the tenure of 218,347 informal-settler families nationwide.

Of the total P412.6 million granted to Region XI to date, Davao City has been granted the highest CMP loan approval in the region, accounting for 63 percent, or P262 million, for 73 CMP projects.

With Manuel Cayon

In Photo: Vice President Jejomar Binay, concurrently chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, expounds on his plans for the agency’s programs when he guested recently at DWIZ’s program “Karambola.” With him are former Makati Rep. Teddy Boy Locsin and former Rep. Salvador “Sonny” Escudero, who are among the regular hosts of the popular talk program airing from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday to Friday.