Philippine Economy

Today is May 16, 2007 and I'm in the Philippines right now for a vacation. I was looking around about the real estate market and the general economy and here are some of my observations. As you may or may not know, the real estate market is booming. A lot of new developments are coming up and it looks like 1986 again.

I was talking to a banker friend of mine and she said that the economy is doing very well because of the E-VAT. The budget is at a surplus, lending by the government is down so the new bond issues are at a lower interest rate. Hence, the increasing bond prices which made the UITF go up in value a lot. Now that it has stabilized, the UITFs are not returning as much anymore.

Prime lending rate is at around 8% so it is pretty low since I recall about 3 to 5 years ago that rates are above 12%. Since lending rates is so low, this will help spur lending to buy homes and cars.

Interest rates for savings is at around 3% and since the stock market is doing better. More investors are going to the market. Peso-Dollar is at the high 46 just below 47. Which is interesting.

Well, based on what I'm seeing, the Philippine market will still go up as well as the rest of the world probably until the end of the year.

The real estate market may go higher still since most of the buyers are the OFWs who are looking to retire in the Philippines. They're the biggest buyers of the new property developments here and they are the ones being marketed heavily by these property developers like SM, Ayala Land and Robinsons.

It is interesting since the prices of homes is going up a lot. Whereas 5 years ago, you could hardly give away any homes, now, it's being sold out almost as it is being put on the market.

So what is the purpose of this entry? Nothing, I'm just thinking out loud and putting what I observe in print so I can come back to it later. If I were to invest today, I would put it in the real estate for the next 2 years and the stock market until next year or to the end of the year.

I would reduce any high risk investments by next year and look for other investment opportunities as I believe the markets will slow down next year after the Beijing Olympics and the US Presidential Elections.