The greatest year for banking

During 2024, the Philippine banking system scored its best year.

- TONY LOPEZ

And 2025 might prove even better for our beloved banks, even if only slightly, despite unprecedented geopolitical challenges of the worst trade war in 100 years, the highest tariffs in 100 years, the resurgence of imperialist America after 80 years and the sudden end of the 80-year-old trans-Atlantic security, economic and cultural alliance.

The Philippine economy is not as heavily dependent on foreign trade as its Asian neighbors. So it should be able to weather the turmoils triggered by Trump's tempests and tantrums.

Our banking system is the region's oldest. It used to be the biggest, at least in ASEAN.

Today, just one regional bank, Singapore's DBS (assets: $555 billion), is bigger than the ENTIRE Philippine banking system which has total resources of just $424 billion.

Either our banks are overregulated, by our Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), or they are simply too timid to increase lending some more, deploy more deposits as loans and fund aggressively production of certain necessities like food, or both.

In December 2024, lending by Philippine banks was up, at double-digit rate, 12.2 percent, more than double the economic growth rate. Bank lending growth in September was 14 percent.

A number of our banks scored record profits, making themselves literally billion-peso cash machines, enabling their owners, our country's richest and best tycoons, to become astronomically richer.