MANILA – A state-owned financial institution announced it is offering to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their beneficiaries the opportunity to double their savings in just nine years.
Called the Double Your Money program, Reynaldo David, the president and chief executive officer of the state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), said OFW depositors only need a minimum of $1,000 to join.
David added payment is made a maturity but depositors can also use their account for back to back loans.
“Depositors can be assured that their money will be taken care of especially with DBP’s strength and stability as a government financial institution,” David emphasized.
There are more than eight million OFWs deployed throughout the world, most of whom are working in the Middle East, Europe and the US as well as neighboring Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
David added that for 2009, the DBP will go back to its basic banking functions of prudent lending and conservative investment.
The DBP, David also said, will do more retail banking and will concentrate on deposit generation as exemplified by the program which it is offering to the OFWs.
According to David, most banks in the Philippines have reoriented or are in the process of refocusing their efforts to the domestic market due to the worsening global financial ad economic turmoil which offers limited or even no options in the international market.
In a related development, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the state-run private pension fund Social Security System (SSS) to condone the penalties and surcharges on the loans incurred by workers, including OFWs, who have been retrenched from their jobs due to the global crisis.
The condonation is to be effective for one year, the President said in her order to the SSS, which is the private sector counterpart of the pension fund for the 1.2 million civil servants, the Government Service Insurance System.
An SSS spokesman confirmed there is an ongoing amnesty being extended by the agency on loan penalties and surcharges that will lapse on April 30 this year.
But the amnesty could be extended for another six months in line with the order of President Arroyo, the spokesman added.
The amnesty program, he also said, covers short-term loans like salary and emergency loans.
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