Pag-IBIG Fund members save record P52.5 billion

Pag-IBIG Fund members saved more than P52 billion in the first 10 months, breaking another record for the period and exceeding full-year figures before the pandemic, top agency officials said Wednesday.

Data showed that from January to October, the amount collectively saved by members with the agency reached P52.47 billion – the highest for any 10-month period. The savings collected so far this year grew 35 percent from the same period in 2020 and were 26 percent higher compared to figures from 2019, which was the agency’s best performing year.

“Even during these challenging times, we are happy to see that members are still keen on growing their savings with Pag-IBIG Fund. With the amount of savings increasing by P13.66 billion compared to last year and P10.81 billion compared to our best year in 2019, these numbers clearly show that Pag-IBIG Fund has already recovered from the effects of the pandemic,” said Secretary Eduardo del Rosario, who heads the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development and the 11-member Pag-IBIG Fund board of trustees.

“In fact, the P52-billion savings collected as of October this year already exceeds the amount of savings collected for the whole 12 months in all previous years. With more savings, Pag-IBIG now has more funds for its programs to help more members in the coming months and even years. This is our contribution to the recovery of the nation, which is being led by President Duterte,” said del Rosario.

Driving the growth is the agency’s voluntary savings program, the Modified Pag-IBIG 2 or MP2, according to Pag-IBIG Fund chief executive Acmad Rizaldy Moti. He said that in the last 10 months, MP2 savings amounted to a record-breaking P 21.43 billion or 41 percent of the total savings collected for the period.

“We have seen the dramatic increase in MP2 in the last five years. In fact, the MP2 is the only figure that did not show signs of slowing down, and even grew during the pandemic. But the growth in 2021 is truly remarkable. The P21.43-billion MP2 savings as of October is more than double the P10.21 billion collected in the same period last year and is already P8.16 billion more than the P13.27 billion collected for the whole 2020. To put it into another perspective, MP2 has grown so much this year that savings as of October is higher than the total amount collected from 2012 to 2019 combined!,” said Moti.

The agency said the increase in purely voluntary savings corroborates the results of the 2021 Philippine Trust Index that ranked Pag-IBIG Fund as the most trusted GOCC.

“We thank our members for their continued trust in Pag-IBIG Fund and in choosing to rely on us to grow their hard-earned savings. We still have a few more weeks before we end the year, and with numbers such as these, I am optimistic that 2021 will be another milestone year and the start of another wave of ‘best year evers’ as we help even more members securely save for their future goals,” said Moti.