RP Now a Key Emerging Market for Global Investors

The Economy |

By MAJOR TOM | September 19, 2009

It’s about time that Philippines have a respite from perennially being included in those notoriously vicious lists that state the who’s who or what countries are among the most corrupt or in violation of human rights and some other negativity --- even just for a while.

You know, RP would be a hall-of-famer by now, having performed so well in those listings in recent years.

Philippines had just been singled out by the United Kingdom Trade & Investment office to be remarkably 9th in rank as a key emerging market for global investors, up 14 spots from last year’s 23rd.

This should be one better news, aside from recent business reports of an ever-increasing forex reserves and improving credit ratings from Moody’s.

This is fairly a well-studied economic assessment since actual global business entities have been surveyed for this listing.

That’s unparalleled investor confidence for us.

It’s to be pointed out that UK remains to be the top source for foreign direct investments in the Philippines (this is unexpected for me; I had always thought U.S. or Japan to be leading in this category).

One wonders why Philippines place well in investor confidence despite the many negative happenstances within our midst and of course the global economic downturn still not settling down completely.

What I see is the kind of ‘ballooning’ and eventual ‘burst out’ that almost always happens in finance. We all know what they say about increasing numbers in terms of production and manufacture, quality suffers and deteoriates. Over-investment in areas like China and India (as well as Asia strong contender Vietnam) must have led to a ‘bursting’ situation that other locations like the Philippines now becomes more and more attractive to investors who are batting for more ‘quality’, and steadier ground, those that are not in danger to boiling over.

Over-investment (when mismanaged) might possibly lead to overheating and this is a great hazard that global investors are trying to move away from.

2 Comments »

1. Abaniko says; September 19, 2009 @ 8:44 am

   That's good news, indeed! If only the government will strive more in ensuring security and the elimination of too much bureaucracy, graft and corruption in the country, then the Philippines will surely attract more foreign investors and soar to greater economic heights.

2. Major Tom says; September 19, 2009 @ 9:07 am

   To Niko: That should be the way bro, lots of reforms and especially in stabilizing environment, like peace and order and security. Apparently, the most serious concern investors has is risk of expropriation and nationalization.

   I hope we could enable new laws that would further ensure this guarantee, without of course minimizing our sovereignty.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>