Oriental Mindoro 1st district Rep. Doy Leachon floated this idea Monday, a week after the LBP became the subject of a high-profile tirade of President Rodrigo Duterte, in his fourth State of the Nation Address , no less.
“LBP also caters [to] general banking, like DBP. If that’s the case that it can function as such, the law merging them can just amend to include farmers’ banking needs including the loan term or duration covering various types of loan agreements,” noted Leachon. In his SONA last July 22, President Duterte slammed the LBP for being too commercialized and not fulfilling its supposed mandate of serving the needs of Filipino farmers, who are typically poor and lacking capital. He went as far as threatening to “reconfigure” LBP if it didn’t change its ways, pronto.
“But the law creating or merging it would streamline operations and thereby reduce the gargantuan overhead and operational expenses,” he said.