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By Likha C. Cuevas-Miel, Reporter
COMPANIES from the United Kingdom
are looking at possible business opportunities in the Philippines,
according to the British Chamber of Commerce, adding the emerging
market is “very much back on the investment map.”
“In the last 9 months there has
been very significant change. The British companies and British
investment corporations and NGOs (nongovernment organizations) are
very interested in this market, particularly the IT (information
technology), the call center area. The mining sector is (also)
booming,” Leslie Stokes, British Chamber chairman, said on the
sidelines of the Isla Lipana and Co. anniversary rites.
The executive said a CEO of a
Scottish development organization will come to the Philippines for
his first trip to Asia, an indication of strong interest the country
is generating abroad.
“That is a real plus. Let me
tell you that doesn’t normally happen because they [usually pick]
Thailand—which is questionable now—or Vietnam,” Stokes said.
Besides the improvement on the
fiscal front, what draws foreign money to the country right now is
the potential of the resource sector now that metal prices have shot
up in the international market.
According to Stokes, mining these
minerals were not viable 5 years ago because the prices were not
high enough to justify the cost of exploring and mining. “You are
sitting on the pit of most of the world’s reserves, [which] are
now viable [to be mined],” he said.
Meanwhile, the linguistic
capability of Filipinos continue to be the top drawer for business
process outsourcing (BPO) investors even if doing business in the
country has become expensive.
“Competency has never been an
issue. I’ve been in Asia for 35 years—all over Asia—but the
competency level here is high but never been maximized. You can
communicate much easier than Thais. You have so many
advantages—your ties with the US, the literacy in English, high
educational standards and all of those things have not been
maximized,” Stokes said.
However, the Philippines has to
watch out for Vietnam because it is the next destination of foreign
investors if “they can’t get things done here” as lack of
infrastructure and government red tape are major deterrents for
foreign businesses.
“Vietnam now is probably your
biggest threat, much more than Indonesia, in lots of other areas
like services and tourism. They’ve also got lovely islands,
beautiful beaches so they could go through tourism just like what
Thailand did, which they had been so successful. So that could leave
you hanging if you don’t do your infrastructure,” the British
businessman said.
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