Pag-IBIG Fund and the Murang Kuryente Party-list have signed a partnership agreement aimed at making solar panels and other energy-efficient home upgrades more affordable for the state housing fund’s members.
Congressman Art C. Yap of Murang Kuryente Partylist and Pag-IBIG Fund CEO Marilene C. Acosta recently signed the Memorandum of Agreement at a launch event, formalizing a partnership that will route the fund’s home-improvement financing programs through the Murang Kuryente Coalition’s outreach network.
Acosta said the agreement supports President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s push to ease household costs, calling it central to Pag-IBIG’s mandate.
She said the coalition’s support would help the fund extend its programs and services to more Filipinos.
The centerpiece program is the Pag-IBIG Short-Term Loan for Home Improvement, which lets qualified members borrow up to P300,000 pesos over as long as five years for upgrades including solar panel installation.
Acosta announced that the first 10,000 borrowers under the program will receive a subsidized 3% annual interest rate, lowering the monthly payment on a maximum loan from P5,835 pesos to P5,390 pesos — a savings of P445 pesos a month.
Acosta urged the coalition to help publicize the program so more members can access affordable financing, cut their electricity bills and support what she described as the group’s shared goal of improving conditions for Filipino workers and their families.
GSIS Executive Vice President Jason Teng said his agency’s own solar financing program, the Ginhawa Solar Energy Loan, offers government employees loans of up to P500,000 pesos at 5% annual interest with a five-year term, no service charge and three years of free insurance.
Teng said more than 23,000 GSIS members have already availed of the program.
He framed energy access as an economic and social issue as much as an environmental one, and told the coalition that even a 5% take-up rate across the combined 26 million households covered by Pag-IBIG, GSIS and SSS would put solar financing within reach of 1.3 million homes.
Yap, a former Bohol governor now representing Murang Kuryente Party-list, has made electricity costs a signature issue in Congress, including House Bill 8415, which seeks to remove value-added tax on system loss charges passed on to consumers.
The recent agreement extends that advocacy into financing policy, pairing it with GSIS’s existing solar loan program as part of a push to get affordable solar financing to a larger share of the roughly 26 million Filipino households covered by the country’s major state funds.