Liu: NDB is about meeting demand

By MATTHEW VARI

Wednesday, October 2, 2013 (Midweek Chronicle, PNG)

ACTING Managing Director for National Development Bank (NDB), Moses Liu, said this while responding to queries on why NDB was approving loans when it clearly did not have the funding to back them, last week at a press conference at their headquarter at Waigani, in Port Moresby.

The queries were in relation to the banks call’s for adequate funding from the national government in 2014- with lending approvals at the bank exceeding funds available, 2013 being K60 million worth in unfunded approved loans.

NDB has funded only an average of 58 per cent of approved loans over five years due to a lack of funding- 42 per cent of the approved loans are carried over to the following year resulting in a lot of clients being frustrated.

He said that NDB was established to create affordable banking solutions and services to Papua New Guineans, in the rural areas in particular.

“NDB is all about meeting the demand, so the government must know that the people want these products.”

“We have to look at bankable applications basically; we do not want to turn our people away.”

“Clients come in having the faith that NDB will provide, therefore it is our responsibility to press the government to provide the funds,” he said.

Liu added that the expectation has been inevitably built by the government and the onus was put to themto deliver- whichhe pointed out was where the demand had come from without actually delivering the goods.

“In our instance they want loans- we just have to facilitate those loans that are bankable, that meet the criteria, we need to approve them. It is my job to get the government to fund these loans.”

Executive Manager for Lending, Trevor Cain, added that apart from the unprecedented demand, there was also the dilemma that of the K130 million that the government allocated in the 2012 budget- the bank received only K80, with no knowledge of where the other K50 million had gone to.

This year alone the bank has seen a huge increase of loan applications to unprecedented levels, with a huge contributing factor being the SME Summit held in Madang recently.

“Trevor Cain) we were promised K80 million but we are delivering on K100 million (in loans approved).”

“We have looked at over 600 applications, likely to be another 300 applications that we are processing at the moment, and that is as a result of the SME Summit held recently in Madang,” Cain said.