MANILA – Seven out of 10 Filipinos own a house or other sort of real estate, but most do not have the financial security of holding bank savings, making them more vulnerable to the ‘rainy days’ or lean season. This was found in a survey conducted by the Banko Sentral Pilipinas, where Consumer Finance Survey said the most common assets of an average Filipinos are own residence, home appliance and retirement insurance, with 68.8 percent owning their house and lot, while 30.8 percent own only their house.

Thirteen percent pay house rent while 18 percent do not own nor rent a house, a minority or 0.2 percent declined to answer. Housing is largely paid through cash payment or inheritance, or gift, while 6.7 percent borrowed money for their housing, mostly through government housing institutions.

Interestingly, eight in 10 household, or 78.5 percent of the respondents, are found to have insufficient fund for their own savings. Some 92.8 percent of them reasoned out they did not have enough money for a bank deposit. Some of them said they don’t need a bank/cash account, cannot manage an account, the minimum balance is too high and 1.8 percent of them said they did not want to deal with bank/financial institutions.

The study also said 73.4 percent of those surveyed pay an annual interest rate of 10 percent and below, some 14.1 percent pay 11-20 percent per annum and a minority of them pay even a high of 21 to 60 percent per annum. The survey also said most of the respondents own other forms of assets such as farms, business and motor vehicles.

The CFS results indicate a significant increase in the country’s labor force over the next decade. The sample size of the said survey was 10,520 mainly from National Capital Region and areas outside NCR such as regions 1,7 and 11 during November 2009 to January 2010, with 89.4 percent response rate.*PNA

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