Landbank books record P15.5 B income last year

State-run Land Bank of the Philippines booked a double-digit profit growth to a record P15.5 billion last year from P14.1 billion in 2017 on the robust performance of its core businesses.

Landbank president and chief executive officer Alex Buenaventura said the 10 percent rise in net income was boosted primarily by the strong growth in its loan book.

“We achieved exceptional performance in 2018 with our net loan portfolio expanding significantly by 37 percent or more than P220 billion to reach P840 billion,” Buenaventura said.

He added the government-run bank continues to support the agriculture sector as well as small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) and local government units (LGUs).

“We are pleased to have improved on our net income performance in 2018 as we continued to expand support to our priority sectors, especially the farmers and fishers, cooperatives, agribusiness, SMEs and LGUs,” Bue- naventura said.

He pointed out the bank’s net income could have been higher due to the significant growth in loans.

“However, we incurred a significant increase in manpower cost last year because of the implementation of the Salary Standardization Law which affected our income,” he said. Landbank’s deposit base grew 17 percent to P1.66 trillion last year from P1.42 trillion as government and private sector deposits increased.

Capital also increased 26 percent to P131.62 billion from P104.6 billion.

Landbank remains the single largest lender to small farmers and fishers and the leading provider of financial assistance to SMEs among governmentowned and controlled corporations as well as government financial institutions.

It also finances projects in agri-infrastructure, agri-business, schools and hospitals, farm-to-market roads, housing and livelihood, and development projects of local government units.