Foreign ownership regulations, contrary to what the fringe, traitorous so-called “constitutional reformists” are saying, is never the key factor as to why Philippines remained poor and left over by its formerly similar peers. No businessman in the right mind would ever invest in a country whose history of being a colony of Spain warranted its political climate to be the most corrupt in the world.
Foreign ownership regulations are far stricter in Vietnam, where only 49% foreign ownership is allowed. Yet it was able to accrue more investment commitments from foreign investors than Philippines ever has. Subsequently, it now has a higher per-capita gross domestic product and is soon poised to overtake the Philippines in nominal gross domestic product itself. The reason why Vietnam was able to attract more foreign investment is due to confidence over government stability and accountability, something that Philippines being a hybrid of Hispanic and American political influences completely lacked.
The old Asian Tigers of South Korea and Japan have far stricter regulations, with Japan at measly 10% foreign ownership before lowering it down to a sickly 1% in 2020. Chaebol conglomerates hold the South Korean government hostage and, since the Park Chung Hee regime, has actively sought to prevent foreign investment in the country as much as possible. Despite many problems that plague them today, those two countries remained on the top world economies.
Singapore is really not surprising in that it had to be the whore of the world at the onset. The small island nation had no natural resources to extract and turn into riches, and it originally even did not want to be an independent country at all, as it was kicked out by Malaysia due to its restive Chinese majority. Consequently, it had to sell itself out to foreign capitalists if it meant enriching its people. Currently, despite guises of independent foreign policy, it cannot risk alienating its external benefactors, especially the United States, China and Australia, lest foreign investors leave due to political unrest and pressure, therefore they had to beg for their foreign masters countless times from a position of weakness just to make them stay and keep the island city state afloat.
In nearly every Philippine city, political corruption is the norm and politically correct. A bribe in a red tape to be given to the mayor or a city official as a “gift” is required for investors to set up a business in the city. This is especially true for foreign and big local businesses wanting to be a part of the country’s economy. For this reason, many settlements in the country were officially incorporated as cities but were never able to get off beyond their small or underdeveloped status, while special economic zones such as those in Zamboanga and Subic Bay never really saw investment commitments.
San Miguel Beer Processing & Manufacturing Plant in the town of Santa Cruz, just adjacent and south of Davao. The plant was originally planned to be set up in Davao itself, but the corruption of the city’s councilors demanding some sort of “gift” which disgusted the company’s execs and made them set up shop in this sleepy town south of the city instead.
Fringe uber-globalist groups always see the wide opening of Maria Clara’s vagina as the be-all, end-all solution to all of Philippines’ economic woes. They did not even realize that despite the “strictness” of foreign ownership regulations, the Chinese government currently holds the switch to the country’s national electrical grid, with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines now 60% owned by a “private” Chinese company that has direct ties to their government. Anytime they wanted to, the Chinese government can shut down the country at will, bathing the archipelago in pitch black.
These fringe groups have also just forgot the existence of American firms in the country. To name three examples, there are American agricultural megacorporations Dole, Bayer and Monsanto, all of which hold the Mindanaoan province of South Cotabato in a stranglehold. Because of them, namely generous usage of chemicals and genetically-modified organic products to increase the output of the pineapple plantations that comprised the southern half of the province and which products are solely catered for the American market, the southern half of the province is now a semi-arid desertified mess with bone-dry rivers.
The Silway River in Polomolok town, South Cotabato province, bordering the big city of General Santos
A small sand dune beside the highway in the provincial capital city of Koronadal
Though the province, especially the major city of General Santos, has physically changed into what development enthusiasts call “progress” due to the presence of these American giants, in reality most of the people living there remained poor, with many barely surviving $2 a day. Big and clustered shanty communities are the norm in General Santos where those three American megacorporations have their national headquarters in, composed largely of poor folk coming from the province’s fringes as well as from the neigboring province of Sarangani. And despite all that sheer foreign economic presence its gross domestic product is only less than half of similarly-sized Cagayan de Oro.
And lest everyone forget, Philippines is a dangerous place.
The Zamboanga Crisis, ca. 2013
It is a country that, due to the ethnic and religious divide, is wrecked in the fires of civil war and anarchy ranging from fighting between competing political dynasties with their private armies, bandits and racketeers roaming the cities and countryside, Marxist rebels composed largely of peasants who thanks to Spain’s feudal hacienda system lost their lands as well as students who are disillusioned with the country’s status, Muslim separatist and terrorist groups that continue to terrorize Mindanao, and criminals that continue to plague the cities with ever-increasing intensity raging from rapes to homicides that would have made Haiti looked like a nursery school. With all these, no one in the right mind would ever invest in a country that does not even offer a measure security to their assets. Maybe there were a number who braved the chaos, but they are mostly concentrated in major cities where security is somewhat better.
When it comes to foreign ownership restrictions, Philippines does not even come close to what Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Malaysia and Brunei are offering for potential prospectors. Investors deliberately avoid the Philippines, not because of foreign investment restrictions as open-pussy economists would like people to believe, but due to political instability and corruption and issues regarding national and internal security.
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