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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Philippines Must Jump

This is a sequel to my earlier post.

On the news today from NYTimes:

“With the relative decline in U.S. economic and financial power, it is inevitable that U.S. leadership will also decline,” said Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief cabinet secretary. “We are seeing a new, multipolar economic regime starting to emerge.”

Mr. Shiozaki and others are careful to point out that no one is talking about replacing Washington as guardian of the global economy. Rather, what they envision is a world where America shares oversight of the global economy with emerging powers like China and India, as well as Europe and Japan.

The link to the news is here.

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All it is saying is that a new economic order is shaping up.

And on what and why the Philippines should jump?

I read Reyna Elenas' post about the archaic banking system of the Philippines. This simply implies that:

1. Deposits of Pinoys overseas worth, probably, several tens of billions of dollars can be taken advantage of, if and when, our banking system gets wired internationally, i.e. accept deposits, withdrawals, and other banking services similarly offered by other international banks. The Queen can't even pay his Condo payments via the internet through BPI - which means she can't probably deposit, withdraw, much less pay transactions using his Philippine based bank accounts while in the US.

So, many OFWs maintain deposits in overseas banks and in countries where they live and work simply because our Banks are not apt to it.

2. With relatively high interest rates the Philippine banks offers to depositors vs the Japanese banks that offers almost 0% interest rates, similar to banks in the Middle East... I would deposit my money in a Philippine bank which would give me at least 3 to 5% interest. Some rural banks even offers double your money in 5 years! But our banks are archaic, they are not apt to it - thus missing a huge resource of depositors out their for grabs.

So, if you are a Japanese or an Arab, would you deposit your 25K dollars, now that it is insured for 1 million pesos in a Philippine Bank? I, probably would, if and only if, I can access the money anytime, anywhere like a VISA card does.

So, why don't the Philippines banks offer international banking services, and attract an international base of clients? I don't know.

Sadly, as Reyna Elena noted, our banks are "archaic", whatever that means. That's probably why.

Banks are collapsing in many countries in US and Europe, maybe it is about time that our banks fill, at least 0.05% of the void? Can we?

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No wonder De Lapaz was carrying cash to Russia instead of a card or check book.

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Sleep and sleep and wait for progress, ehehehehe.