Despite the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) is optimistic its net income for this year would hit P28 billion.

That projected figure, however, is less than the P34.37 all-time record income the fund earned in 2020.

“Based on stress tests that we’ve conducted in September, the P25 to 28 billion net income will be much better than originally projected. Based on stress tests last April-May, the numbers that we worked on was around a net income of only P20 billion,” said Pag-IBIG Fund Chief Executive Officer Acmad Rizaldy Moti in a Friday press conference.

This year also saw Pag-IBIG Fund’s membership decrease by more than 2 million to to 12.69 million as of September this year from the 14.6 million at the end of 2019, which was also caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, Pag-IBIG Fund still registering an income this year is much better than incurring a loss, as the Covid-19 pandemic caused a general slowdown in economic activity locally and globally. Moti said the fund already generated an income of P21.65 billion from January to September this year.

“This is good news despite the effects of a pandemic on our lending business. It’s very encouraging. It looks like lending has stabilized and started to recover, and have gone back to the pre-pandemic levels,” he said.

Also, housing loan releases already reached P44 billion in the first ten month of the year or up to October. Furthermore, short-term loan releases amounted to P26.02 billion in January to September.

Moti said the latest loan figures also show how the country has managed to live with Covid-19, which also led to the gradual reopening of the economy.

The Pag-IBIG Fund official also expressed optimism that its Modified Pag-IBIG 2 Savings Program or MP2 will register good gains this year.

“So we are looking at around P12 billion or even higher. It looks like this year we will set the highest ever MP2 collections from our members,” Moti said.

The 2019 collections from MP2 Savings amounted to

P12.01 billion while P4.47 billion was collected in 2018. CURRENTPH