Tag: foreign investment

Loser mentality: Filipinos’ 500-year dependence on foreign investment

June 13, 2013July 8, 2015 benign0 10 Comments

To understand the fundamental flaw in the idea of the Philippines’ relying on a strategy of counting on “foreign investment” to rescue its people from their own self-created wretchedness, it is important to understand the equally fundamental definition of poverty. Quite simply: Poverty is a habitual entering into commitments one is inherently unable to honour….

Charter Change, Development, Economy

The Philippines in 2013 remains dependent even on ‘Independence’ Day!

June 12, 2013 benign0 32 Comments

So once again we are celebrating “Independence” Day — or rather the date we would like to think the Philippines won its independence. I do wonder though why we continue to propagate the notion that we emerged from the year 1898 the winners. Last I heard, winners get to rule. Last I heard, we did…

Development, Society

It is not Noynoy Aquino’s fault that the Philippines is the worst place to do business in

November 15, 2011 benign0 20 Comments

The “shocking” news that the Philippines is actually one of the worst countries in Asia to do business in continues to reverberate among the chattering classes. Yes, personally I’m still getting over the “shock” of such a revelation. It made me re-think investing my personal fortune in a country where the only thing that I’d…

Culture, Development, Economy

The Philippines is one big SQUANDERED foreign investment

June 30, 2011June 30, 2011 benign0 17 Comments

So we want more foreign investment, do we? Stop to think. How much of it have we already received? Look around and take stock of what exactly it is about “the Philippines” that is of any consequence to anyone that is indigenous in origin. Indeed, the Philippines is one big foreign investment. Much if not…

Culture, Development, Economy

Without operational excellence, capital is squandered

June 29, 2011June 29, 2011 benign0 5 Comments

The grand-daddy of our culture-as-root-cause thesis, the late great Teddy Benigno, in his classic 2002 Star article Why investors avoid us: The trust factor highlighted what, at the time, was a very conservative forecast regarding China’s fortunes made in a Nomura Research Institute (NRI) study that foresaw a China that could “burgeon into the world’s…

Culture, Development, Economy

Hope for the Philippine economy lies in domestic investment and not foreign investment

June 28, 2011 benign0 13 Comments

I am undoubtedly seen as a determined critic of the administration of Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. But that is only because the man generally personifies much of the underbelly of the Filipino psyche that I’ve made it a personal online career to highlight over the last several years. In short his character just…

Development, Economy

Foreign direct investment: Are Filipinos up to the task of seizing opportunities served up to them?

June 4, 2011September 22, 2014 benign0 18 Comments

Seeing foreign direct investment, cash handouts, and subsidies as the silver bullet that will cure chronic Filipino poverty? Think again. Lots of lessons are to be learned in what former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad said in a speech at the Harvard Club of Malaysia dinner on 29 July 2002 about how the presence of…

Culture, Development, Economy, Education

Foreign capital will not solve Filipinos’ inability to apply capital profitably

June 3, 2011April 26, 2018 benign0 41 Comments

In my 2006 book Get Real Philippines Book 1, one of the key solutions I cited to the challenge of effecting fundamental change in the path we have (rather consciously) set for ourselves to chronic impoverishment is to re-evaluate the content of our mass media. I highlighted that it is an easy solution, because much…

Development, Economy, Media