Investor Presentaiton
B. Investment statistics, data gaps, and conceptual issues
Investment statistics in the Philippines is being generated and released by multiple
government agencies. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) compiles foreign direct
investment (FDI) statistics as part of the country's Balance of Payments. Quarterly and annual
data on FDI inflows and outflows form part of the Financial Account, while the stock of FDI is
part of the International Investment Position of the country's BOP. However, the BSP figures
on the stock of FDI, differ from those of the IMF's (International Monetary Fund) data coming
from the Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS) database and the UNCTAD's (United
Nations Center for Trade and Development) data. Moreover, disaggregated stock data such
as by industry and by country are not available.
Data on new investment projects of enterprises which applied for government
incentives from any of the country's investment promotion agencies such as the Board of
Investments (BOI), Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), Cagayan Export Zone
Authority (CEZA), Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), Authority of the Freeport Area of
Bataan (AFAB), Board of Investments-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
(BOI-BARMM), and Clark Development Corporation (CDC) are being consolidated and
published by the PSA on a quarterly basis broken down by foreign and domestic investors'
share. However data on realized investments from these approved projects are not available.
Financial data of corporations and partnerships reported in their business registrations
are supervised and monitored by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). With the
data from registrations, the SEC releases statistics on the paid-up capital of newly registered
corporations, and the number of registered corporations classified by with or without foreign
investments. Additionally, the SEC receives and evaluates documents such as audited annual
financial statements (AFS), general information sheet (GIS), general form for financial
statements (GFFS), and industry-specific special form for financial statements (SFFS) as
required from its registered corporations. These documents are a potential treasure trove of
financial and investment data-domestic and foreign, including intellectual property
ownerships. However, the processing of data for hundreds of thousands of active companies
(with about 4716 FDI enterprises) to draw a representative sample remains challenging.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) complements SEC's registration mandate
as it is in-charge of the registration of business names of sole proprietorships which is renewed
every five years. It is also in-charge of providing incentives and assistance to Micro Small and
Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country. The DTI releases annual data on the number
of MSMEs with classifications defined by asset and employment size, which is based on the
list of establishments of the PSA. The existing data provides a good profile of MSMEs, but
there is a need to trace the growth of MSMEs say in terms of numbers, years of existence,
economic activities and financial sustainability.
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