Govt still eyes UCPB stake recovery
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2019 16:17:32 +0000
THE government still plans to recover its stake in United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), but not by privatizing the state-owned lender, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd said.
Dominguez told reporters late last week that the government still had a stake of “about P42 billion with them (UCPB),” but clarified that the final amount was still being checked, as it probably had grown.
“We haven’t come up with the final amount, but it’s large,” he said, adding: “[M]y estimate is it’s probably P100 billion already.”
The government is evaluating how it would recover the said amount, according to him.
“As chief finance officer of the country, I would like to get back everything that we have there… I am pretty sure that privatizing it (UCPB) is not going to do it,” Dominguez said.
In 2017, the government, through the DoF, expressed its intention to privatize the bank.
The Finance chief said then the government would stop supporting UCPB beginning this year by selling its 73.9-percent stake in it.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the government owned the majority of UCPB, as the stake had been acquired using money from a levy charged to coconut farmers.
The then-ruling Aquino administration announced plans to privatize the bank, but this was held up in 2015 after the high court stopped the government from utilizing the coco levy fund.
The restraining order was lifted in September 2017.