Credit card industry sees double digit growth

Despite the country’s economic and political problems, the credit card industry remains confident that it can achieve a double digit growth in 2000, industry sources said yesterday.

As of September last year, credit card companies reported a combined cardholder base of 3.057 million, 14.5 percent higher than the 2.671 million registered for the whole of 1999. Assuming an average monthly growth of 250,000 new cardholders, the yearend figure for 2000 could reach 3.8 million, or a growth of over 40 percent.

Whatever it is, the Credit Cards Association of the Philippines (CCAP) believes that a 20-percent growth for 2000 is realistic.

CCAP president David G. Sarmiento Jr. said achieving a card base of three million in the first nine months of 2000 is already a milestone. "And if we achieve more than 20-percent growth in the 20th year of the association, it would be a double celebration," he added.

Sarmiento forecasts that the card base will grow by a conservative 10 percent to a more optimistic 20 percent this year.

The industry has been growing by an average 13.5 percent per year since 1997. By the end of 1997, the card base was reported at 2.1 million, growing to 2.345 million the following year.

But while the number of cardholders had been growing steadily, the industry’s total billings has been behaving erratically.

As of September last year, billings were registered at P71 billion while it was P77 billion for the whole of 1999. In 1998, the total was P79 billion, P8 billion more that the card billings in 1997.

The CCAP believes that billings will reach P90 billion by the end of the year primarily due to the Christmas buying in the last quarter of the year. However, forecasts for the card billings this year could register a conservative P90 billion or merely at par with last years spending "if the political climate remains uncertain."