The Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) on Tuesday reported that outstanding loans to cooperatives have reached P73.8 billion as of February; the bank also said it expects its services to expand, partly driven by ACDI Multipurpose Cooperative.

ACDI is the institutional cooperative which provides credit to over 269,000 members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, including those in active service, retirees, those in the reserved force and regular civilian employees of the military.

State-owned Landbank said the loans were distributed to nearly 1,400 agricultural and non-agricultural cooperatives nationwide.

To ensure wider access to financial services, LandBank said it granted ACDI an undisclosed amount of rediscounting line facility last 8 April to support the cooperative’s working capital for banking products to uniformed personnel.

Proud to support ACDI’s growth

LandBank’s corporate communications officer did not share the specific loan amount “per request of the client.”

“Since 1996, we are proud to have supported ACDI’s growth into one of the largest cooperatives in the country,” Landbank president and chief executive officer Lynette V. Ortiz said.

“We will remain committed to strengthening the co-op’s working capital to boost its lending activities for our uniformed personnel,” she added.

For his part, ACDI chairman Gilbert Lianto said, “The confidence that LandBank has put on us will reflect on the way our people will also operate. Being the leading financial institution of the government, I think it’s a good affirmation of how far ACDI has gone also.”

According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, cooperatives accounted for 1.8 percent of all loans in the first of 2023. This amounted to P229.5 billion.

In terms of assets, the BSP said cooperatives represented 1.7 percent.