Philippines

At the end of 2012, the Philippines was home to 79 non-life insurance companies, 29 life insurers and a single reinsurance firm. With a strong history and few limitations and restrictions on foreign investment, the Philippine insurance industry is open, thriving, growing and competitive; however it is widely acknowledged that the sector should be more inclusive, as it currently serves only a...

The Philippine Stock Exchange had the second-best performance among Asian equity markets in 2013. It hit 38 all-time records during the year, broke 6000 for the first time in January 2013, 6500 in Feruary, and 7000 in April. The challenge is now to build on this strong foundation, further developing the systems, institutions, and regulations that will guarantee the market’s continued success...

The Philippines banking sector has strengthened significantly in recent years, tracking general economic trends and benefitting from prudent measures put into place over time to boost capital and improve supervision, corporate governance and transparency. The local institutions that emerged from the late 1990s are stable and more wary of excessive risk and asset-liability imbalances. The...

For a number of years the Philippines worked hard to lower tariff rates, with the average weighted tariff applied falling from 22.4% in 1989 to a low of 2.6% in 2003. However, rates have begun to creep up again. The Philippines is actively considering a number of liberalisations to better align itself with the more open of its regional peers and to better integrate itself with the global economy...

While other countries in the region may have been taking the spotlight as top performers, the Philippines has been recording steady and continuous growth. Indeed, the country has not had a serious annual drop in GDP since 1985. Going forward, expectations are positive. While the IMF has been reducing growth forecasts in the region, the organisation’s 2014 prediction for the Philippines is staying...

With a complex history marked by successive waves of migration and periods of colonisation and occupation, the Philippines is home to a host of ethnicities and languages across its roughly 1000 inhabited islands. It is the 12th-most populous country in the world, with a population expected to reach 99.43m by 2014, according to the IMF. The Philippines has plentiful natural resources. An estimated...