National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon appealed to the public not to close their Landbank accounts amid fears over the state-owned bank providing seed money to the Maharlika Investment Fund.
De Leon said state-owned banks such as Landbank and Development Bank of the Philippines are “stable.”
“Let’s say Ladbank invests P50 billion in Maharlika, that is less than 3 percent of its P1.3 trillion investible funds. That is such a small investment,” she said.
“It will not affect prudential rations imposed by the Central Bank,” De Leon added.
She said the MIF is “vital in accelerating the implementation of infrastructure projects of the national government.”
Meanwhile, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said the MIF could provide the government more funds for its flagship projects.
He said the MIF’s approval opened the gateway to an alternative, potentially huge source of investment funds that would let the national government spend bigger on its big-ticket programs to shore up President Marcos’s agenda for peace and prosperity.
The final version of the MIF bill, which the House of Representatives and the Senate ratified on the eve of the Congress’s sine die adjournment, sought to provide a new source for investments other than the traditional sources of funds, namely, the General Appropriations Act (GAA) or national budget, official development assistance (ODA) from the country’s overseas partners and the business sector through public-private partnership (PPP) projects, Villafuerte said.
“As another potentially massive funding source for priority investments of the national government, the MIF has the makings of a prime source of fresh capital for accelerated infrastructure development, agricultural modernization and food security, climate action, energy development and other big-ticket projects that the Marcos administration needs to carry out,” he added.